"It’s the end of the world every day, for someone"

From Lapham's Quarterly's Disaster Issue:

It’s the end of the world every day, for someone.

—Margaret Atwood, 2000

Shock and Awe

The neverending end times.

By Lewis H. Lapham

Catastrophe is our bedtime story.
—Don DeLillo

’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.
—David Hume

Nor is it contrary to reason to prefer the sight of a raging inferno or restless typhoon to the view of a worm in one’s apple or a fly in the soup. The spectacle of disaster—real and imagined, past, present, and imminent—is blockbuster box office, its magnitude measured by the number of dead and square miles of devastation, the cost of property, rates of insurance, long-term consequences, short-form shock and awe....

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