It’s been four years since I joined the Herald. The summer of 2016, almost exactly four years ago, was the shining culmination of my whole life. Per social media users, however, the year of 2016 was the beginning of the end, the peak of the rollercoaster, the portent of the apocalypse. Is it true? Has it been nothing but a rapid and loud downward spiral for the world during the last half-decade? And will it continue to our demise?

The timeline of the last few years has been grim, to say the least. The election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum marred the end of 2016. The Hong Kong protests proved to be a miniscule roadblock as China bulldozes its way to a complete political takeover. The #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements have been issues hundreds of years in the making, boiling over in an awe-inspiring display of unfaltering cries for minority human rights. And lest we forget: a global pandemic unlike any other before.

On the other hand, the significance of such events is decided from a Western-centric viewpoint. The Syrian refugee crisis flushed the mainstream media only when it became a European problem, despite the civil war decimating the country since the early 2010s. Who speaks for the Uyghur encampments in China, the massacres in Sudan during the Arab Spring protests, or the unending famine and devastation in Venezuela? For some, the apocalypse has been always happening.

The world has always been full of unknowns, but COVID-19 was the final straw that robbed us of any sense of control. People are desperate for this control back, and vying to be the first to seize it — whether it’s the control over their own or others’ lives. The economic downturn, imbalanced gender dynamic, political extremism, wealth concentration, oppression of LGBTQ rights, and the climate cataclysm are unfurling right on our tiny screens. It’s chaotic, it’s frightening. It feels hopeless.  

But this negativity can in turn signify progress. According to the scientific online publication Our World in Data, people tend to be individually optimistic, while being socially pessimistic. They rely on examples readily known to them to shape their perception of the world, known as the availability bias. The variety and the volume of our newsfeed lead us to deem the world unsalvageable. But the more exposure a story gets, the more atrocities and injustice can be addressed. In judging that the world is crumbling apart, we may be in reality finally ready to fix the socioeconomic and political — and hopefully, environmental — wrongs.

So, has the world been getting worse? Yes. No. I don’t know. I can’t even speak for myself; I don’t know whether during these four years at The KAIST Herald I have become a better person today than I was yesterday. But that doesn’t mean I won’t stop trying to become a better person tomorrow than I was today. My time at this publication ends in isolation during a global crisis. It’s not the end I hoped for, but I do not make my exit any less satisfied than I would have been, for I know I’ve done everything I could during my time. If the end of the world draws near, I hope we can say the same.

 

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