You've probably heard the phrase before. It’s been stuck in the cultural craw for decades. Usually, it's attributed to Slavoj Žižek or Fredric Jameson, though the two of them have sort of passed the credit back and forth like a hot potato. The core idea is simple: it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine a fundamental shift in our socio-economic reality.
Think about that. Truly.
We can picture a giant asteroid slamming into the Pacific. We can vividly imagine a virus turning everyone into stumbling husks or a nuclear winter that freezes the topsoil for a thousand years. Hollywood spends billions making sure we can see those things in 4K resolution. But ask someone to describe a world where we don't use money, or where the concept of a 40-hour work week is as dead as the horse and buggy, and their brain usually just... stalls. It's a weird glitch in the human hardware.
This isn't just some philosophy 101 stoner thought. It’s a phenomenon called Capitalist Realism, a term popularized by the late Mark Fisher. He argued that we’ve reached a point where we treat our current way of life not as a choice or a historical phase, but as a law of nature. Like gravity. You don't argue with gravity, right? You just learn to live with it. Except, our systems aren't gravity. They’re just ideas we all agreed to follow at some point, yet we’d rather watch the planet burn in a cinematic explosion than try to rewrite the script.
The Psychological Trap of Why It’s Easier to Imagine the End of the World
Why is our imagination so broken? Honestly, it’s partially because of "availability bias." We are flooded with apocalyptic imagery. From The Last of Us to Mad Max, the "end" is a well-defined aesthetic. We know what the scrap-metal armor looks like. We know what the abandoned, vine-covered skyscrapers look like. We have a visual library for the apocalypse.
On the flip side, what does a "post-capitalist" or "radically different" world look like? If it's not a utopia that feels fake and cheesy, it’s a blank space. Humans hate blank spaces. We prefer a scary, concrete ending to a vague, uncertain beginning.
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There's also a heavy dose of exhaustion involved. When you’re working two jobs just to keep the lights on, you don't exactly have the mental bandwidth to architect a new global trade system. It's much simpler to just think, Well, I hope the meteor hits before my rent is due. It’s a form of nihilistic escapism. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world because the "end" requires no more effort from us. A total collapse is a vacation from responsibility. A systemic change, however, requires work. It requires organizing, arguing, and failing until something finally sticks.
The Fisher Effect and Cultural Stagnation
Mark Fisher’s 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? hit like a ton of bricks because it named this feeling. He pointed out that even our "anti-system" movies—think The Hunger Games or Wall-E—actually reinforce the idea that there is no escape. They show us the horror of the system, but they usually end with a return to a simpler, more primitive way of life rather than a sophisticated new one.
We’ve become consumers of our own critiques.
I remember reading about the "slow cancellation of the future." It’s this idea that culture has stopped moving forward. If you look at music or fashion from 1970 to 1990, the jump is massive. If you look at the jump from 2010 to 2026, it’s... kind of the same? We’re stuck in a loop of nostalgia, remakes, and "retro" aesthetics. When we can’t imagine a new future, we just keep remixing the past until the world ends. It’s a cultural feedback loop that makes the apocalypse feel like the only "new" thing left on the menu.
Real-World Consequences of a Limited Imagination
This isn't just about movies. This mental block has real-world stakes, especially when we talk about climate change.
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If we truly believe it’s easier to imagine the end of the world, then we approach climate policy with a sense of "pre-emptive despair." We see the headlines about melting ice caps and rising sea levels, and instead of demanding a total overhaul of how we produce energy and distribute goods, we buy a slightly more efficient car and hope for the best. Or worse, we just give up.
Psychologists call this "eco-paralysis." It’s the feeling that the problem is so vast and the current system so rigid that the only logical conclusion is the end of everything.
The "Boring" Alternative
What people often miss is that the alternative to the end of the world isn't necessarily a "utopia." It's just a different set of problems.
Historically, people have lived in wildly different ways. Feudalism felt permanent to the people living in it. The Divine Right of Kings felt like a law of nature. When those systems broke, the world didn't end—it just changed. But for the person living inside the change, it feels like the end. If you were a lord in 1789 France, the end of the monarchy was the end of the world.
We are currently the "lords" of a consumer-driven, hyper-connected digital age. The idea of losing that—even if it's replaced by something more sustainable or equitable—feels like death. We equate our specific way of living with life itself.
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Breaking the Loop: How to Actually Imagine Something Else
So, how do we fix this? How do we make it easier to imagine a better world than a dead one?
It starts with "speculative fiction" that isn't just about zombies or nukes. We need stories that explore the "boring" parts of a better world. How do people resolve conflicts in a world without police? How do people get food if there are no supermarkets? These aren't just policy questions; they are the building blocks of a new imagination.
We also have to acknowledge that the "end of the world" is already happening for a lot of people. If you live in a sinking island nation or a war zone, the apocalypse isn't a future event—it's Tuesday. The privilege of "imagining" the end of the world as a distant, cinematic event is a luxury of the stable West.
Actionable Steps to Expand Your Political Imagination
It sounds weird to "practice" imagining, but that’s basically what we have to do. Our brains have been trained by decades of disaster movies and "there is no alternative" politics.
- Read Solarpunk, not just Cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is cool, but it’s just "capitalism with more neon and sadness." Solarpunk is a genre that actually tries to envision how technology and nature could coexist in a non-exploitative way. It's much harder to write, which is why there's less of it.
- Study "Prefigurative Politics." This is a fancy term for "living the way you want the world to be right now." It's about creating small-scale versions of the future today—like community gardens, tool libraries, or co-ops. When you see something working on a small scale, it becomes a lot easier to imagine it on a large scale.
- Question "Natural" Laws. Next time someone says, "Well, that's just how the world works," ask why. Usually, they’re describing a policy choice made in the 1980s, not a fundamental truth of the universe.
- Audit Your Media Diet. If 90% of the stories you consume are about the collapse of civilization, your brain will naturally default to that as the only possible outcome. Seek out histories of radical change. Read about how the Montreal Protocol actually fixed the ozone layer or how the 8-hour workday was won. Change is possible because it has happened before.
The world is remarkably fragile, but it’s also incredibly stubborn. It’s easier to imagine the end of the world because collapse is simple. It's gravity. It's things falling apart. Building something new, or even just imagining it, is an act of defiance against that gravity. It's okay to feel overwhelmed by the state of things, but don't mistake your lack of imagination for a lack of possibility.
What to do next:
Start by looking at one "permanent" fixture in your life—whether it's your commute, your debt, or your reliance on a specific tech giant—and research one historical example of how people lived without it. Understanding that our current "normal" is a historical outlier is the first step toward realizing that the future is still unwritten. Seek out community-led projects in your city that focus on mutual aid; seeing collective action in person is the best cure for the "capitalist realism" that makes the end of the world feel inevitable.