The End

Why the apocalypse should happen

Matt Abra, Volunteer Staff/Illustration by Kevin Doole

The first thing you will learn in any creative writing course is one simple rule — know your ending. Whether you’re writing a novel, a screenplay, a musical, or, in my case, a debate claiming that the apocalypse should happen, your resolution will most likely come across as weak and contrived if your narrative path has not been moving towards that end all along. Writers who have a good grasp on the direction they are heading with any piece of storytelling are typically the ones who can finish things off in a memorable fashion. The ending, after all, is your last chance for a good impression.

Now then, think about this strange possibility: what if one day a writer sat down to pen a screenplay and, low and behold, never finished it? In others words, they never had an ending in store and never tried to create one. Picture yourself then sitting down in a theatre to watch said movie. It keeps going. And a little bit more. It doesn’t seem to be ending, and I’m not talking Lawrence of Arabia doesn’t end, I mean literally — it does not end. The central conflict has been resolved, the characters have progressed as far as they can, but still, “the show goes on.” What do you do? Personally, I’d create my own ending by walking out.

Naturally, this is only a simple analogy, but it makes one think about the importance of “getting to the point,” as they say. Our culture, our society, our tiny little planet, is always progressing; and naturally it’s in our best interest to continue furthering this progress, because, let’s face it, we don’t know how much time is left. I hold firmly to the idea that our chance for perfecting ourselves could be quickly slipping away. We don’t have forever. It is as Ray Kurzweil said in The Age of Spiritual Machines, “Time would be pointless if there was too much of it.”

So then when examining the prospect of a coming apocalypse, there are a couple ways one can look at it. For one, Earth could be completely wiped out. Destroyed. Goodbye! Frankly, that would suck, because it would mean that life as we know it would be vanquished forever. I suppose it is something we can expect whenever the sun finally decides to burn out.

However, nowadays most people’s basic end of the world definition implies that only life on earth will be wiped out, but the Earth will nonetheless remain. If the apocalypse occurs and this is the case, then it leaves room for other forms of life to start over. It happened 65 million years ago, it is bound to happen again, and, you know what? It should. Life on earth shouldn’t be allowed to continue if it ceases to have room for improvement or if it squanders its chance at perfecting itself, as might already be the case.

The world is just one big movie, gradually putting together its plot pieces and moving towards its eventual conclusion. Some movies end happily, some don’t. I suppose if the world ends badly, chances are we will only have ourselves to blame, but at least it’s an ending.

But if by some miracle, we do progress to a unique utopia with everyone from Al Gore, Paris Hilton, and Osama Bin Laden casually enjoying piña coladas together on the beach that might stand as a pristine time to call it quits. There isn’t much point in continuing a story when there is nothing to do, no problems to fix, and no further happiness to create. It would be time to move one, not unlike a Buddhist moving on after he or she has reached nirvana.

In The Matrix, Agent Smith pointedly explains how the original version of the Matrix, created by the machines, was built as a utopia to make everyone happy. Smith then describes how big a disaster that utopian world had been. The truth is: a society cannot sustain itself without conflict. As Smith put it, “I believe that as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering.” Therefore, humanity needs strife so that we have something to improve upon. As long as we occupy ourselves with the fight to end that suffering, humanity will flourish. When the fight is over, so is any further justification for carrying on.

In “conclusion,” either we will fix earth’s problems or they will lead to our eventual undoing. Which brings us back to our movie example. When a film has resolved its conflict, it typically ends. The world needs to exist under the same set of rules. If it chooses not to, we need to walk out. The end must come. The end.

Matt Abra is a third-year arts student.