Save yourself, serve yourself
World serves its own needs, listen to your heart bleed
Dummy with the rapture and the revered in the right
You vitriolic, patriotic, slam fight, bright light
Feeling pretty psyched
It’s the end of the world as we know it
~R.E.M., It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
I have a friend who is truly convinced that climate change means our children will not die of old age. She says humanity is one pandemic away from total destruction, adding if some white man with a small penis doesn’t release the nuclear bombs first. Her life motto? We are all doomed. So bleak. But maybe she’s right. Maybe it is the end of the world.
But as Michael Stipe reminds us, it’s only the end of the world as we know it. It’s never the actual end of the world. When I really start to despair for humanity, I am soothed by the story of evolution. You see, evolution has taught us something crucial: life adapts and endures.
The story of evolution is not merely a scientific timeline, but a spiritual narrative, a poem written across eons. Every ending is a new beginning, a climb from molecules to sentient minds, from ocean sludge to sailing vessels, from silence to symphonies, from swirling cosmic dust to Harry Potter and facial recognition software and pickleball and air fryers.
Our DNA is a stardust museum of everything that came before. Species don’t adapt because it’s easy; they adapt because they must. In this, evolution mirrors our own lives. When we resist change, we become trapped. When we accept it, we evolve.
Four and a half billion years ago, Earth was a hot, molten sphere, nothing but chaos and gas. Lightning struck the oceans, and from that primordial soup of chemicals, something miraculous happened. Simple molecules assembled into life, laying the groundwork for the 14 million species that would at some point call this blue marble home.
About 3.5 billion years ago, single cells learned to photosynthesize. As a byproduct of photosynthesis, oxygen was produced, accumulating in the oceans and the atmosphere. The so-called Great Oxygenation Event killed off many ancient forms of life, but it also opened the door to new possibilities. From every ending, a new beginning.
Then came the Cambrian explosion, a burst of evolutionary creativity unmatched in the history of life. In the seas, creatures developed eyes, shells, and limbs. For millions of years, swimming and slithering creatures grew extinct, then returned, better equipped to survive the changing landscapes and atmosphere.
Some fish developed lungs and limbs, enabling them to crawl onto land. Ferns and insects followed. Then came the dinosaurs, who ruled for the next 180 million years. 66 million years ago, an asteroid six miles in diameter hit the Yucatan Peninsula and, just like that, 75% of the species on Earth disappeared.
But the ending of the (non-aviary) dinosaurs was our beginning. Mammals, once small and timid, rose to fill the empty spaces left by the dinosaurs. From primitive mammals, primates emerged, then stood upright. We lost our tail and gained a lifetime of back pain. We developed not just tools and fire, but words and stories, empathy and worry.
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Our DNA is a stardust museum of everything that came before. Species don’t adapt because it’s easy; they adapt because they must. In this, evolution mirrors our own lives. When we resist change, we become trapped. When we accept it, we evolve.
So we get better at being human. Or we deplete Mother Earth’s resources to our own extinction. A shame, but ultimately a blip in the story of our planet. When we imagine the end of humanity, fear often fills the picture. We see loss, silence, an abrupt vanishing of all our stories, our art, our laughter. It feels unbearable to think that everything we are might slip into nothing. And yet, if we look through the lens of evolution, there is another way to see the end – not as an annihilation, but as a continuation of life’s boundless creativity. The universe wastes nothing. Our bones, our cities, and our histories will feed the soil of tomorrow.
From our ending will grow a new beginning. Evolution reminds us that we are not the pinnacle of existence, but a chapter in a much longer book.
If it’s the end of the world as we know it? I feel fine.
