ENDING

Now Interviewing!

2010-10-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

After having spent the last year exploring good and evil, the creative process, and the burden of the self, I have once again found myself back looking at the end. In an effort to explore modern day end of time narratives I will be conducting more interviews. As I stated at the onset of this endeavor, I am fascinated by the fact that everyone that I have had the pleasure of interviewing carries their own personal notion of how they believe the world will end. Whether or not they believe that it will happen in their lifetime, there is a thread, a fiber in them that houses their personal end of time narrative. So once again, I ask, how do you envision the end of the world?

Now interviewing!

Contact: kjmuggli@gmail.com

Interview 14

2009-06-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

JOHN M.
AGE: 54
OCCUPATION: PHYSICAL NETWORK/SECURITY MANAGER
EDUCATION LEVEL: MASTER OF SCIENCE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
JM: Badly. No, I think nature is going to do us in. For a while I thought we were going to nuke ourselves. Or maybe even some disease or something.
KM: You don’t think it’ll be any sort nuclear holocaust anymore?
JM: No.
KM: What changed your mind on that possibility?
JM: The global economy, that wouldn’t really be good for business. You don’t want to wipe out all your customers.
KM: On the nature end of things what do you see happening?
JM: Something will happen to cool the climate down, whether a meteor spits a bunch of shit in the air, or a super volcano or something. The ice age will start again.
KM: You think then humans will go the same way as the dinosaurs?
JM: Yeah.
KM: If were you were a dinosaur what kind would you be?
JM: A big one. But I would be a vegetarian dinosaur because the vegetation was good back then.
KM: No big pandemics then?
JM: Well there will probably something that will go around, but it will just thin the herd a little bit.

Interview 13

2009-06-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

ROB S.
AGE: 47
OCCUPATION: PAINT AND FINISHING DEPARTMENT COORDINATOR
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
RS: How do I think it’s going to fall apart? An asteroid. An asteroid will hit us and we’ll all die a fiery death. Or, its going to be the bird flu. Seriously though, total annihilation, it, gone?
KM: Either the end of the physical earth, or humans. Or both.
RS: As corny as it sounds, I don’t think anything will ever end. There will always be some sort of remnants of us having been around.
KM: You’ve never envisioned some sort of total annihilation?
RS: Aside from some sort of asteroid blowing up the earth. We know that a million years from now the sun will burn out and go supernova and we’ll be gone. Either way people will get together and persist and survive.
KM: You don’t see any sort of pandemic or virus wiping us out?
RS: We had that pandemic in 1918, there have been several pandemics but they won’t wipe us out entirely.
KM: Even if there were to be some huge space impact we’ll call it, how would anyone survive that?
RS: If the impact was large enough you wouldn’t. Based on our millions of years of history there have been several catastrophic life changing impacts, but there will always be some little microbe that will live.

Interview 12

2009-06-18T14:15:00.002-07:00

WILL W.
AGE: 25
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
WW: I don’t know, I’ve never really thought the world was going to end. I don’t think the biblical one is going to work. I don’t think it will be over in 2012 or whenever they say.
KM: Why don’t you think the biblical one will work?
WW: I’m not silly churchy. I don’t think there will be four horsemen and plagues and rapture and stuff.
KM: You don’t think anything will happen in 2012 then either?
WW: No! Isn’t that the big doomsday day? When the Myan calendar resets and the fortune teller guy went off. I don’t think there is any set day. And I also don’t know what you mean when you ask the world is going to end, like when our civilization kills itself? Or when the world explodes or what?
KM: Which one to you would mean the end of the world? The end of civilization or the world blowing up?
WW: I don’t know. Just cause all the dinosaurs were dead does that mean the world ends? Or is it Bravo Burrito going out of business.
KM: So am I to assume that you would equate Bravo Burrito going out of business as apocalyptic?
WW: No. I think apocalyptic if your going that route, I think of apocalyptic as world war three, nuclear holocaust. Mutual annihilation crap, everyone dies cause we blew ourselves up.
KM: Do you think there will be any sort of nuclear holocaust in our lifetime?
WW: I think we will eventually kill ourselves. Our strive for growth and industrialization will kill us.
KM: Humanity will bring about it’s own demise then?
WW: Yeah.

Interview 11

2009-06-18T14:15:00.001-07:00

PAUL S.
AGE: 27
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, SOME COLLEGE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
PS: Something stupid we’ll do.
KM: Something stupid as in?
PS: I don’t know. Eventually making this planet uninhabitable for ourselves. We have to worry about whether or not we can live on this planet.
KM: So what would be one these stupid things?
PS: Overpopulation to the point that there isn’t enough food for everyone. Overall pollution levels. Some man made disease. Nuclear bomb. It’s going to be the consequences of us slowly overpopulating the earth.
KM: Basically what you’re saying then is it will be a result of humanity getting bit in the ass for the way that they are living right now.
PS: Yes, and their general attitude towards living on this planet.
KM: By attitude do you mean people blindly thinking that we have an endless supply of resources?
PS: That, and that we couldn’t and aren’t making this planet bad enough to the point that we can’t live on it anymore, especially with the mass numbers of us now.

Interview 10

2009-06-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

PAT C.
AGE: 19
OCCUPATION: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, PERSUING BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
PC: Should I just give one answer? Or more than one? The first one, which to me would be more likely is a new disease that pops up. Not like the diseases like we have today, where there’s a scare. This one would be something that we wouldn’t discover or know about until it would be too late. We would all be wiped out before we could even know what was happening. You look to your left and there is someone dying. You look to your right and someone is dying, and you are already infected yourself, and there is nothing you can do about it.
KM: So a pandemic in the realest sense?
PC: Yes.
KM: And the second?
PC: The second one is, let me think of the word. Hmm, it would be like everyone would just fall asleep and everything is just gone. In the snap of a finger. Everything is just gone. The overall thing is when it comes, we won’t know its coming.
KM: You don’t see any sort of world war that will annihilate us all that people are conscious of?
PC: Nope. Just from a human nature point of view. It’s against human instinct to kill off everyone. The majority of the world could be taken out, but there would be a few stragglers.

Interview 9

2009-06-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

JOE M.
AGE: 20
OCCUPATION: UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, PERSUING BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
JM: End of the world as in civilization? Or as in the world as in no living organisms left?
KM: Either one, or both.
JM: Well, considering we’re a being that can tell emotion, time, lifestyle, have instincts and have evolved from previous beings or creatures that didn’t have that, the end of the world would be in two or three million years when man evolves into something else.
KM: What you’re saying then is that the end of humans as we are now will be their next evolutionary step?
JM: It will be the next evolutionary step because like any organism that relies on an ecosystem for survival, ours will diminish and something other than human will take over the next step of what will happen in the world. You have the dinosaurs, the reptiles and seacreatures. In a sense, we’re going to wear out our welcome in the ecosystem. Because technology will only get you so far in the game of life.
KM: No big pandemic will sweep us away, or humans wont nuke eachother or starve, we’ll just simply evolve out of ourseveles?
JM: Yeah, because part of, well, humans will just evolve to a new thing because our habitats and ecosystems will make life harder for people to sustain life the way it is now. Because we’re overgrowing our ecosystem the way that it is it will eventually kill us off as a defense because the ecosystem that we rely on it a greater and more powerful thing that anything that walks it or uses it. And that’s about it.

Interview 8

2009-06-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

LOIS M.
AGE: 53
OCCUPATION: RESTAURANT ASSISTANT MANAGER
EDUCATION LEVEL: MASTER OF COSMETOLOGY

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
LM: Hmm, how to put it? Everything is amuck or amiss. Everything is in disarray. And the following morning everyone is sleeping and it is peaceful, and mother earth would begin again.
KM: It would be then, a slipping of humanity into a collective consciousness that would reincarnate itself to rebirth mother nature?
LM: Yes. Mother nature would reclaim herself. Because without Mother Nature we have nothing. I envision Mother Nature having no boundaries.
KM: Would this be then a rebirth of humanity as well? Or would the world just go on without the human species?
LM: The human species would have to reincarnate or redo themselves. Like we’d have one more chance to get it right.
KM: What is it that is so fundamentally wrong then with how the human species operates right now that Mother Nature would have to reassert herself in such a way?
LM: The human species in general taking what is given to us for granted. Not appreciating what we had in the beginning. Not appreciating the simple things.
KM: Are you referencing then the way in which we have been treating the earth since the industrial revolution?
LM: That’s probably when we first realized it. I think it dates back before that. But that’s when it really started to the point where it is now, when we have no way of stopping it.
KM: Then it is not only the way in which we are treating the earth, but the attitude and way of thinking that has gotten us to where we are today?
LM: Yeah, we always think it’s going to grow back and replenish itself. But it can’t re-grow and replenish when we keep polluting it and cutting it down.
KM: But you think ultimately that Mother Nature would give us a second chance?
LM: I do. Yeah, I believe she would ultimately cleanse the earth and start it again.

Interview 7

2009-06-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

RAUL T.
AGE: 35
OCCUPATION: EXECUTIVE CHEF
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
RT: I see it pretty violently actually. The end end? I see it being pretty painful. I don’t know about the fire and brimstone stuff, but upheaval comes to mind. Catastrophic change. Which isn’t all that bad.
KM: Violent in what way? World War? Nuclear holocaust? Nasty pandemic?
RT: Violent in the sense that we’ll have to make drastic choices. I think that’s really going to bring the end end. Choice for change, and then those that don’t want it. I think that’s where the violence comes in, people are just so against change. And it’s going to be played to the soundtrack of Prodigy. No I don’t see as plague, not biblical end. God has bigger fish to fry.
KM: What then would be one of these choices? Choices between what?
RT: I think the choice to accept our humanity. Because ultimately we are the ones who make the choices to move on, to progress, to evolve to something better. That’s why I have issues with the whole God apocalypse thing. Why would he choose to end the big show now? He’s been letting us run amuck for this long, why would he care? We all have free will. People that don’t want change are going to hold fast. And are going to fight it.
KM: Who do you see winning?
RT: I don’t think it’s a case of winning. I think eventually the world is going to win. Winning is being able to make the fight, not winning or losing. It’s happening in three years anyways. I’m obsessed with the 2012 thing. I think living through the Bush administration has made me realize that the world will end. Bush being in office was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the world going to hell in a hand basket.
KM: So what is going to happen in 2012? Have you built your bunker or fall out shelter yet?
RT: 2012 to me has been an obsession to me in terms of, societies before us whether it was the Myans or whomever, were much more in tune.
KM: In tune in what sense?
RT: The watching of the stars. Who actually watches stars anymore? Life to them was about that. Observing the world around them. Mathematically the stuff that they did was amazing. They believe in epics. Time periods exist in epics. It wasn’t about prophesizing, it was about cycles, everything is cyclical. 2012 is a world change.
KM: So what is this change going to entail?
RT: The I, I, I, has to become a we, we, we, thing. If you don’t change I’m going to seriously fuck with you till millions of you die will be the sentiment. The change is we. Billions of I’s all needing to become us.

Interview 6

2009-06-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

NOAH J.
AGE: 32
OCCUPATION: BOUNCER/SECURITY
EDUCATION LEVEL: TECHNICAL COLLEGE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
NJ: Hmm. It’s got to be a war. That or a plague. I’m thinking a war.
KM: War? Who starts it?
NJ: Who starts it? It’s those damn Commies. Who starts it? Probably us. I like the plague thing too though. I know, Bio-chemical.
KM: Probably us, as in the United States?
NJ: No. Us.
KM: As in, human beings?
NJ: Yeah, you know. It’ll probably be the United States. If you ever think of population, and there’s really no population control besides AIDS or natural disasters, we’ll all just be living on top of each other.
KM: So it will be more of a war based on resources?
NJ: Yeah. Natural resources. Not so much oil, but things like clean water. Fertile soil to grow food. Basically kind of like what we’re doing right now anyways.
KM: Why would a plague be interesting?
NJ: Mother earth has to protect herself all of the time. That’s why there’s natural disasters that’s why there’s fires and shit. There’s nothing to really control our population. If there is a plague it’s going to be some nasty shit, and the war would begin out of the fight for clean water and resources for vaccinations.
KM: Would this war ever start otherwise? Other than out of the fight for these resources?
NJ: Well sure, yeah of course it would.
KM: What would be some other reasons?
NJ: A pissing match really. Political shit. Nah I think it’d be mostly political really.
KM: Political as in we’ve got more weapons than you, here they are, BAM!
NJ: That, and it all depends on where it is and what they have. That’s not starting, but in a way it’s already starting. Western powers seeping into each other. Or really it would just come down to needing water and food.
KM: It would be based really on needing the sole necessities to sustain human life?
NJ: Right. That’s on your continent.
KM: So it would be a continental thing? Mexico Canada and the US would turn to South America and fight them for bananas?
NJ: Not so much for their bananas but for their land. It would be a fight for sustainable land then. If they’re not with them then they’re against them. I can see the United States starting it though.
KM: So no four horsemen or anything of the sort?
NJ: It won’t be blatant, but just like before any war there are signs. You just have to know how to read them.

Interview 5

2009-06-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

CHEY K.
AGE: 32
OCCUPATION: SEVER /PHOTOGRAPHER
EDUCATION LEVEL: COLLEGE DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
CK: Similar to the dinosaurs. I think that a meteorite will hit the earth and people will die. And the cockroaches will live.
KM: We’ll meet the same demise as the dinosaurs then?
CK: Yep.
KM: As in the earth becomes uninhabitable?
CK: By humans. I think certain creatures will make it through it. Cockroaches will make it though. Deep-sea creatures will survive. But humans won’t.
KM: It won’t be the death of everything living then, humans at least though.
CK: No, I think it would be humans and the majority of animals. It’s going to wipe out nature in ways, but things will grow back. Certain creatures will still make it through it, how certain creatures made it through the end of the dinosaurs.
KM: But any creatures that help to sustain human life will meet their end in this same happening?
CK: I don’t think it would matter, because people are going to be gone anyways. My guess is if anything like that hit it would be a whirlwind. We would all be swept up, not necessarily into space, but we would no longer be where we were when it hit.

Interview 4

2009-06-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

J.R. P.
AGE: 29
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
JR: I don’t think the world is going to end. I think the human species will end. Planet earth is going to shake us off like a bunch of fleas, and start again like it has many times.
KM: The human species will end, but start again?
JR: Not necessarily the human species will start again, but something will start again. Planet earth shook off the dinosaurs and they didn’t do anything to fuck up the ecosystem.
KM: Will this earth shaking be a conscious thing for the humans?
JR: It’s just a metaphor, the earth will just shake us off like fleas. The earth will decide it is done with us and be like, fucking douche bags, shake us off and start again.
KM: Shake us off like fleas is a metaphor for what exactly? Will it be a nuclear holocaust, a pandemic we can’t fight? Everything that anyone fears right now coming to fruition?
JR: Sure.What I am saying is, humanity will end and the planet will not. The planet will be here no matter what. Human beings are going to destroy themselves, and then the planet earth will shake us off like fleas.
KM: How exactly will the human beings destroy themselves?
JR: I guarantee there’s a pandemic and a series of other things. The pandemic will lead to a world war. Some crazy terrorist will unleash a pandemic that will lead all of these countries to fight an invisible ghost and nuke everything, but the rich will survive and others will not.
KM: All of this will be instigated then by a single person unleashing some sort of virus to kill us all?
JR: The best way I can put this is remember at the beginning of World War I when that one dude killed that Arch Duke Ferdinand and then everybody jumped in? One dude is going to fuck it up for everybody.

Interview 3

2009-06-18T14:00:00.000-07:00

BRIAN M.
AGE: 33
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: HIGH SCHOOL DEGREE, SOME COLLEGE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
BM: Zombies. There’s so many possibilities. I hope its zombies because they’ll be easier to shoot.
KM: You would like an end that would involve it being easy for you to shoot someone or something?
BM: I would personally find it easier to shoot zombies instead of people. To defend my friends and family against them. In some way too, I don’t know if I necessarily believe in the end of the world itself, but I don’t doubt that there is going to be a reason to go to my cabin and stay there for a while.
KM: What would be one of these reasons to have to go to your cabin for a while?
BM: Financial/infrastructure collapse of the United States. And also it seems that when the U.S. has a cold the world sneezes.
KM: Is this cabin stocked with guns?
BM: No, but my house is. And I’m working on getting a food supply.
KM: For the cabin or for your house?
BM: For the cabin.
KM: Why?
BM: Because as I said before I don’t doubt that there will be a real reason for me to have to stay there.
KM: Why would it be easier to shoot zombies?
BM: Because I know that they are not living people with feelings and emotions and families. They just want brains.
KM: So would their fellow zombies not be considered their family?
BM: No. They are no longer living individuals.
KM: You’re okay with shooting the living dead. Not the living, no?
BM: More so. Yes. In an extreme situation of self-preservation I would hope that I would be able to do whatever necessary.

Interview 2

2009-06-18T13:59:00.001-07:00

KRISTEN H.
AGE 23
OCCUPATION: BARTENDER
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do envision the end of the world?
KH: People are going to die before the world ends. We’ll die off. I don’t really have a particular way in which people will die. It’s kind of a misnomer to say the world will end after humans, the world will keep going on.
KM: So you think humans will disappear before the actual physical earth is gone?
KH: I hope its kind of fun and interesting how humans will disappear but it probably won’t be.
KM: What then would be one of those interesting ways in which humanity will die off?
KH: I’m interested in pandemics, nuclear holocaust would be fun too. I hope there’s another species that takes us over, like dinosaurs coming back and eating us all. That’d be interesting.
KM: So on the pandemic end of things your probably really excited about the swine flu.
KH: I don’t think that will necessarily be the one. I wouldn’t say I’m excited about the swine flu, but I think diseases are interesting. I hope though that it’s a virus that we develop ourselves and it comes back to bite us in the ass. With all of the shit people have done we deserve to kill ourselves off by our own inventions, but I don’t know if we’re really smart enough to do that.
KM: As it sounds, you’re most interested in seeing humanity have to deal with their own ‘inventions’ biting them in the ass.
KH: There would be a kind of poetic justice and irony in that. Having all of these discoveries and abilities that make us think we’re better than we really are, and we’re still the same shitty people we were hundreds of years ago. The things that we think make us human would actually be the things that kill us.
KM: Lets go back to the nuclear holocaust that you would find fun. How do see that starting, what do you think would happen to instigate a nuclear war?
KH: I think it will start as an international relations mistake. Big mistake, enough to piss off the wrong person. It would have to be something that would happen suddenly. I like to think that there are enough people in the world that wouldn’t let something like that happen if it were known about. It would be a big social faux pas of sorts. Not necessarily everyone would have to die either though. An apocalypse doesn’t have to mean everyone is gone, it just means a sort of catastrophic change. I also think iphones will spread disease.
KM: How exactly will they do that?
KH: There will be some sort of harmonic created in the phone that will degrade the brain. Something unexpected. We’re trying to fight the swine flu and iphones are destroying people [laughs].

Interview 1

2009-06-18T13:55:00.000-07:00

AMANDA P.
OCCUPATION: SERVER
AGE: 23
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE

KM: How do you envision the end of the world?
AP: One of two ways. The first being my fathers way, the world will just explode and nobody is going to expect it. The second would be the world would become too overpopulated and we would run out of the necessary resources. It would be over the course of time that the world’s population would be depleted.
KM: So basically people wouldn’t have the resources necessary to survive?
AP: Yeah. I really don’t think it’s going to be a big scientific thing or social level of expectation, it will just happen of the course of time.
KM: Would this be a process that people are socially conscious of?
AP: I think it is a conscious thing for people now. With the population of the world being higher than expected right now, it will only increase. Our level of natural resources and everyday things needed to survive are depleting already. At least the resources we’ve become accustomed to. Like technology and the standard of life people have become accustomed to cannot be sustained at the rate we are going.
KM: It would be more of a peak of everything and then a total decline?
AP: Yeah.
KM: You don’t see any big apocalyptic or catastrophic event?
AP: No, I don’t think it’s realistic.
KM: Once this decline starts do you think people will lose it?
AP: To an extent. I think even today people see the potential of it, and, you know, if something doesn’t change people aren’t going to survive. Generations from now won’t survive, because they won’t have anything to survive off of.
KM: What do you think will be the first thing to go?
AP: Probably our transportation abilities and trade and everything that keeps the world as it is running. Countries and specific groups of people are going to stick together and horde their resources. And then the United States is fucked.
KM: Do you see this leading to some sort of end times world war over these resources?
AP: Potentially, but even then, when it gets to that point there wouldn’t be enough resources to sustain a war.

How do you envision the end of the world?

2009-06-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

KATIE M.
AGE: 22
OCCUPATION: SERVER/ GRADUATE STUDENT
EDUCATION LEVEL: BACHELORS DEGREE, PURSUING M.A.

The format of this project was designed originally so that I wouldn’t have to come close to any sort of conclusions as to how I feel about the end of the world, let alone how I believe it will happen. However, in interviewing others and trying to circumvent my having to think actively about it I have found myself doing just the opposite. I cannot stop in at a coffee shop without surveying the clientele as I wait in line and in my head try to pinpoint how each individual would answer my initial question How do you envision the end of the world? Of course in my brain there is a very superficial judgment that comes from their appearance that leads me to believe how I think they would answer. This judgement is entirely false. As I have found that even my own mother, father, and brother, the three individuals that I have interviewed and know best blew me away with their answers. I can’t say entirely how I thought they would answer, but I sure as hell was not expecting the answers that I received.
Having a photograph of the interviewee is particularly important because it attaches the thoughts and ideas that are expressed in the interview to an image. Providing this visual I feel adds more weight to the answers.
The most interesting part of this entire process has been how open people are to talking about how they envision the world ending. No one ever got worked up while answering questions. Not one person was thrown off or depressed while searching their minds for answers to my questions. If the interviews had been recorded you could have voiced over two people comparing what is on their grocery list for the week—the interviewees spoke in an entirely normal tone while being asked about how they think the world will end.
End. End.
There is a quote that I had fallen in love with last summer while reading The Bloodstone Papers by Glen Duncan (Jenine, I have a hysterical story about running into him at a bookstore in London, where I reacted much in the same way as you did when David waltzed into the classroom). I hadn’t thought of it in months, and while I was posting the interviews it suddenly popped into my head, and find that it applies beautifully to how I view the apocalypse.

Every beginning is fraudulent,
every middle arbitrary,
every ending an illusion.
It’s the ending part that bothers me most.
These days I don’t even like the sound of the word.
Ending.