Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Everything: The Anthropocene or Peak Humanity?

Can we take our contemporary condition’s crisis seriously without adopting the eschatological tone of apocalypse? In the paper I discuss three apocalypses: first, the passing of other hominids such as Neanderthals (approximately 30,000 B.C.E.); second, the oxygen apocalypse, (2,000,000,000 B.C.E.); and third, the possibility of a climate apocalypse. This discussion is not a scare tactic or exhortation to action but shows how a creative universe must be intimate with fragility so that real novelty can exist. Apocalypses are certain but the inflections of each passing and the conditions of each new beginning are mutually unsettled, underdetermined, waiting for a creative nudge.