Are we on the brink of human extinction? Is civilization destined toward self-annihilation? We must not underestimate the risk of the possibility that we may become extinct fairly soon. We are facing a planetary ecological crisis with runaway greenhouse gas emissions, environmental destruction, extreme climate change, human overpopulation, global catastrophic hazards including the threat of world war, nuclear holocaust, bioterror, pandemic infectious diseases, famine, water scarcity, religious fanaticism, techno nihilism, public health calamities, obscene disparities in wealth and poverty, civil disorder, and the anathema of evil that could bring about the end of the world. Philosopher and psychoanalyst Jon Mills provides the first book of its kind that examines the ominous existential risks that could bring about the end of civilization. Drawing on the psychological motivations, unconscious conflicts, and cultural complexes that drive human behavior and social relations, he offers fresh new perspectives on the looming fate of humanity based on a collective bystander disorder. In this timely book, the author explores the emergencies that could ignite an apocalypse. As we stand idly by as passive global bystanders in the face of ecological, economic, and societal collapse, we must seriously question whether humanity is under the sway of a collective unconscious death wish.
Jon Mills, PsyD, PhD, ABPP is a philosopher, psychoanalyst, and clinical psychologist. He is Honorary Professor, Department of Psychosocial & Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK, on Faculty in the Postgraduate Programs in Psychoanalysis & Psychotherapy, Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University, USA, and on Faculty and is a Supervising Analyst at the New School for Existential Psychoanalysis, USA. Recipient of numerous awards for his scholarship including 5 Gradiva Awards, he is the author and/or editor of over 30 books in psychoanalysis, philosophy, psychology, and cultural studies including most recently Psyche, Culture, World. In 2015 he was given the Otto Weininger Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement by the Canadian Psychological Association.
Preface Prolegomenon: On the Brink of Extinction 1. Here on Earth Global Bystanders in the Face of Ecological Crisis The Revenge of Gaia Too Big to Fix 2. 10 Billion What can We Learn from Rats? Overpopulation and the Food Supply Withering Water The Worse is yet to Come: Pandemics, Economic Paralysis, and Societal Collapse 3. The Evil that Men Do The Need to Kill The Ontology of Prejudice On the Universality of Evil The Ethics of Killing Institutionalized Evil 4. The Doomsday Clock is Ticking Dropping the Bomb The Doomsday Argument Existential Risks Should we take the Doomsday Argument Seriously? Our Final Century? 5. Apocalypse Now On Sin Apocalypse, Millennialism, and Eschaton The (un)Holy Land Apocalyptic Discourse in Post-Millennial Culture Futuristic Fantasies Disparities The New After 6. Global Catastrophic Risks Defining Risk Big-Picture Hazards Economic Disintegration Techno Nihilism Superintelligences 7. A World without Recognition The Need to be Acknowledged Dysrecognition as Social Pathology Unconscious Politics and the Other A Failure of Empathy Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma 8. Living in the End Times From a Plastic Island to a World Seed Vault It Took a Child Predicting the Future Democracy Incorporated From Catastrophe to Renewal Environmental Conflict and Peacebuilding The Last Resistance References Index About the Author
We are in a unique period in history in which we are simultaneously capable of understanding species extinction-including our own, which could be self-inflicted-and able to do something about it. Will we? In this engrossing account of the many existential threats we face-nuclear weapons are especially terrifying-Jon Mills outlines the problems and possible solutions. A must-read for anyone who cares about the future of Homo sapiens, in which we do not always seem so wise...but we could be. -- Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine and author of Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational This book is a careful examination of the possible future of mankind. With examples from many parts of the world the reader learns about risk factors such as global warming, industrial pollution, overpopulation, food and water scarcity, infectious diseases and our not having oversight or the ability to control or regulate technological sources. The role of individual and large-group psychology, collective traumas, transgenerational transmissions and the prejudicial unconscious factors leading to wealth and social divisions, racism, wars and war-like situations are also explored soberly in thinking about what may occur. The author refers to collective moral actions for a better future and mentions that what we can do for the planet as individuals is fairly insignificant. However, what he has done as a single person by writing this timely book is very significant. -- Vamik D. Volkan, University of Virginia, author of "Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey Through War and Peace" Warnings of the end of the world are plentiful today. Jon Mills has not written another such warning. Instead, he has delved into the psychic barriers that have prevented people from taking action to fight widespread planetary devastation. End of the World is not just a stunningly insightful analysis of our capacity for unconscious self-destruction. There is an urgency attached to this book because it makes clear exactly why we aren't equal to the catastrophe and how we might begin to respond to our own self-destructiveness. Sadly, given the state of things, this book qualifies as simply unavoidable. -- Todd McGowan, professor, University of Vermont; author of Capitalism and Desire Are we not currently witnessing a strange paradox? On the one hand, there is an increasing consciousness about the manifold dangers that threaten the future of human life on this planet. Yet on the other hand, there is decreasing readiness for action, and ever less ability to find solutions. Fear of death appears to paralyze our political capabilities. Now, as Sigmund Freud has taught us, it is precisely our disavowal of death that makes us so fearful of it. As a psychoanalyst, Jon Mills is experienced with the mechanism of disavowal. His point therefore is not that we will die, but how our lives are affected by ecological damages. Thus, Jon Mills wisely circumvents the pitfalls of rigid panic. Instead, he redirects our displeasure to the precise point where it can translate into concrete political action. This is in accordance with a principle once formulated by poet Bertolt Brecht: political change is only possible for those who fear bad life more than death. -- Robert Pfaller, author of On the Pleasure Principle in Culture and Interpassivity
