The Anthropocene Reviewed

by John Green

I told the interviewer that no, I do not have anxiety around kissing, but I do experience panic attacks, and they are intensely frightening.

I suppose I missed writing, but in the way you miss someone you used to love.

“For anyone trying to discern what to do w/ their life: PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. That’s pretty much all the info u need.”

We are at once far too powerful and not nearly powerful enough. We are powerful enough to radically reshape Earth’s climate and biodiversity, but not powerful enough to choose how we reshape them. We are so powerful that we have escaped our planet’s atmosphere. But we are not powerful enough to save those we love from suffering.

“I cry a lot because I miss people. I cry a lot because they die, and I can’t stop them. They leave me, and I love them more.”

To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars.

We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here.

It’s no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time.

“Never predict the end of the world. You’re almost certain to be wrong, and if you’re right, no one will be around to congratulate you.”

My brain cannot reliably report to me whether a perceived threat is really real, and so I look at Hank, and I see that he’s not panicked, and I tell myself that I’m okay.

As a result, for many forms of life, humanity is the apocalypse.

We’ve caused a lot of suffering, but we’ve also caused much else.

History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.

From the quark to the supernova, the wonders do not cease.

If Coke is a golden eagle, Diet Coke is a hummingbird.

And yet I feel as if I’m committing a sin whenever I drink Diet Dr Pepper. Nothing that sweet can be truly virtuous.

History is new. Prehistory is newer. And paleontology is newer still.