I was recently sitting in a class where we spent some time considering how images of the Apocalypse show up in political speeches on topics ranging from climate change to nuclear warfare.

Images of the Apocalypse are embedded in a wide range of spaces in our popular imagination, where they often culminate in one final, cataclysmic ending to life on earth. While world leaders may not use the term ‘Apocalypse’ itself, the messaging around it is the same: characterized by devastation, desolation, and catastrophe. Fears of apocalyptic-scale catastrophe can be mobilized into action, whether that action is based in saving the planet or advocating for nuclear disarmament.

After class I continued to think about the themes of the Apocalypse. What, I thought, made these themes so durable over time? Why do they continue to resonate with us?

One of the realities that struck me was that some of the themes of the Apocalypse are not mere fantasy, but daily life, especially for so many people living in socially precarious situations. Suffering, conflict, and violence inhabit the lives of so many. The Apocalypse is not detached from the human experience—it is, itself, a large part of this experience.

But one contrasting theme always accompanies the Apocalypse when it is invoked in the speeches of world leaders and activists alike: Hope.

Hope of uplift for those who have been oppressed, hope of freedom and liberation for those who have been cast out and abandoned by society. Hope for the state of the climate, for the state of the planet. Without hope, there is no reason to vote. No reason to protest, nor to stand up against daunting challenges like climate change.

Hope is the only thing that makes it rational to participate in any of these actions, because hope is the binding agent of all of our greatest efforts to actualize justice in a world which continually manifests injustice. Hope finds us in our Apocalypses.

Over the past couple months, our programming at Radius has underscored some of the most dangerous gaps in hope. We have covered topics like the manipulation of elections via foreign actors, white nationalism and supremacy, and the moral hazard attached to technological innovation. At several points, I’ve heard those in attendance remark at how depressed, even hopeless, some of these topics can leave us.

If we can imagine Apocalypse not only in its horror movie-scale form, but in the corners of our collective lives where the vulnerable are submitted to suffering and those in power are complicit, maybe this reframing would skew our vision of hope. After all, hope is required of us while we face some of the world’s most pressing challenges, as it creates a vision of What Could Be out of What Is. It requires us to be morally courageous, to imagine alternatives, to be agents of social transformation.

At a place like MIT, where we know that innovation can be both the stuff of furthered destruction and the stuff of hope, I am grateful for the opportunities which I have had this semester to be in the presence of those who possess the courage hold up both of these realities at once. As many of us make the trek to visit loved ones for the holiday, the gratitude we express around the dinner table does not need to be in spite of the hard realities of injustice and suffering that persist in the world. Instead, we can hold these realities at the same time that we lift up their greatest source of opposition:

Hope.

Best wishes to all those observing Thanksgiving, and thank you for reading!