Our city (Calgary) is at present having a minor but serious water crisis. There is a meaningful chance that access to drinking water will be affected; i.e., the taps will run dry for many people.

This doesn't mean people will die of thirst, but it does mean people will think of dying of thirst, and panic; or at least, will think of other people thinking of dying of thirst and panicking, and panic.

Bugging out, or leaving the city, is a common response that people will describe as their plan in this kind of situation, and because we're planning on going away for the weekend anyways, and because we are hoping to visit family this summer, and because we're, well, panicking that other people will panic (at least), we thought perhaps we should pack a few more things and get out of here before the roads become impassable, as a million plus people all seek to leave at once when their taps run dry. Anyways we decided not to.

But this has crystalized something for me. Two things I mean.

One, in case of the zombie apocalypse, I'm not bugging out. I want to stay and help my neighbours. This is because I think it's the right thing to do, I think it's more realistic, I think it has greater chances of success, and, crucially-- I want to live day-to-day with this being my plan.

Two, "apocalypse" is entirely the wrong word to be using, and drives bad, dangerous, panicked thinking.

Climate change is going to bring a lot of pain to a lot of people, sooner and in more unpredictable ways than we anticipate, maybe. We will hear the words "apocalyptic scenes" a lot. As someone said, you will experience climate change as a series of videos of increasingly bizarre weather-related disasters, until one day you find yourself the one making the video.

The disasters will be real, but what about the word "apocalypse"?

Recently I saw a film, The Rapture, which now naturally comes to mind as it's fresh in it. Less recently, but for some reason also fresh, are the first 500-or-so pages⁵ of Houses of Government, a book about the Bolshevik Revolution published on it's 100th anniversary.

Houses of Government taught me another word, "millenialist." A millenialist is someone who in some way looks forward to the end of all things, and the following-on birth of new ones.

Most Christian sects are millenialist— they look forward to the return of Jesus, judgement day, when the corrupt world we inhabit will finally be destroyed and a new, perfect one remade.¹

The Bolsheviks were as well. They wanted to completely destroy the old system in fire and put a Communist Utopia in it's place.

Many today, myself included, look at the failings of capitalism and feel we are in fact just in "late" capitalism; in other words, it will end soon(ish). Is this a millenialist way of thinking? Ursula K. LeGuin did rightly say that the Divine Right of Kings was once thought immutable, but turned out not to be.

The Bolsheviks, it turns out, did destroy the old system, but they did not plant Utopia. (Aside: the origins of the word "Utopia", you probably know from reading the same internet posts that I read, is to the social sciences what "Unobtanium" is to material science.)

Christian sects have created and destroyed lots of things over the past couple thou, but it's sort of a weird slime-trail through history and I'm not qualified really to weigh in.

Perhaps you believe capitalism as it is today should be smashed. Many systems should be smashed: slavery, apartheid, buncha others.

But it might be millenialist thinking to expect that what replaces our world order would involve a solution to climate change. It might be better, but I can't see that it's a given. And the fuedal system actually sort of evolved away— even today there are still Royals, after all. They don't have the Divine Right of Kings, except they sorta do in places in terms of land title and extralegal protections and stuff. There's that British guy³ who did some terrorism stuff to try and get rid of some king (Henry?) but in the end he ended up sort of a king. And there's that French guy⁴ who did the same deal but a bit differently. I am typing on a computer with no internet but my brain knows both their names, so I'll footnote them after.

Anyhow I digress, but the 9-11 hijackers, if we can pivot there, probably hoped to end something so that something else could replace it, not just kill a bunch of people and start a bunch of wars with no clear outcome other than misery.

I can't make a point that things don't sometimes abruptly end, but I can make a point that people seeking to bring out abrupt ends are a little bit abundant and a little bit of a mixed bag, if we are clear-eyed about it.

Here is a thesis: millenialist thinking is a form of black-and-white thinking. Black-and-white thinking, if you are familiar, is rightly (I believe) best thought of as a kind of disordered, unhealthy reasoning that seeks to put things into one of two categories. Usually good vs. bad. Millenialists want to divide into before vs. after.

We all engage in black-and-white thinking. I think our brains work better when they can categorize things, and making two categories is sort of the first stop along that particular train line.

My son just graduated pre-school. A ceremony held and it is really meaningful and significant to a human father like me. He is no longer a pre-schooler. Now he is a kindergartender. It feels— I mean it sincerely— momentus. But of course, he himself changes only gradually. With great power comes great responsibility, but with changes of title come zero attendant increments in ability. The categories just help us reason with change.

My original motivation for writing this ramble was that we-- or I do, at least-- fall into a pretty major trap in thinking about climate change, and that is a millenialist mindset.

One problem with the 2.5 degrees C global warming line is that it's a line, but crossing it will be a change in category, not a change in pain, which will have already come by then (and will keep coming, after.) (The other problem with it is, I firmly believe, most people subconciously respond to it with: "2.5 degrees? Actually that doesn't seem that bad, honestly." But I digress...)

Apocalypse-- again I am typing this on a computer with no internet, but let me guess at the root. "Apo" == the peak of. "Calypse" == collapse. The ultimate collapse, the final end. If I got this right, hooray me. You can look it up to find out, but, again, I don't have internet on this comupter.

Will climate change really bring us such a neat category? If we let us think in millienialist modes, we will frame our lives in terms of "bugging out". And running away is probably the hardest thing to do, a last resort. It's the right thing to do in an apocalypse, but what I'm saying is that in terms of climate change that might not be the right thing to frame for.

Maybe a more effective mindset is: "Stay put, if at all possible, and help each other get through the sequence of crises we will all face."

Start there, and frame your day to day in that, before a crisis hits, and maybe it will build more resilience into the system.

I'm calling it, "bugging in."

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¹ Why did this exact same Asshole go to all the trouble of making it, then, and like, why do we trust Him to get it right the second time? To be honest, He sounds like a software developer more than anything.

² Also, theologically speaking, if God gave humankind the gift of free will in Eden, what's happening then in Heaven? Is that now gone? Why or what not? Sure you've chosen Jesus and want to be there, for now, but an eternity is a really long time, as I'm sure you realize. And you've probably changed your mind on important things in the last little while. Will changing your mind be allowed in Heaven? Does it send you to Hell? What if you change your mind in Hell, can you go back to Heaven? If Adam and Eve were imperfect, but you are remade perfectly in Jesus' image, what imperfection was removed and why could it not simply be removed in the interim. Again God wants you to choose and love Him, but in Heaven, he is sort of O.K. just enforcing that state of things as a rule? Why not enforce it now then and eliminate suffering? The solution to these riddles is to believe less, not to believe more, as you may have been taught.

³ British guy was: Oliver Cromwell. I was able to remember this name by going to trim my nails.

⁴ French guy was: Robespierre. I was able to remember this name by meditating for a few minutes. I recommend trimming your nails or meditating as a better way, than the internet, of looking up information you already know you know.

⁵ I only got this far in because someone else wanted it and I had to return it to the library.