Between Apocalypse and Awakening
Author: Todd Hoskins Issue: 2025-03-19
Between Apocalypse and Awakening
by Todd Hoskins
In this moment of global uncertainty, our attention is constantly pulled toward the loudest narratives—authoritarianism rising, democracies faltering, systems crumbling. These stories demand our focus with their urgent, apocalyptic framing. Like powerful magnets, they organize our perception around threat, division, and collapse.
The word "apocalypse," as my friend Theodore Richards reminds us, originally meant an unveiling or revelation—not simply destruction but a pulling back of the veil to reveal what has been hidden. Perhaps that's what our current moment offers: not just endings but the opportunity to see more clearly what has always been present beneath the surface of our familiar world.
This unveiling doesn't negate the genuine challenges we face. The rise of authoritarian governments, increasing polarization, and ecological concerns are real forces shaping our world. But they're not the whole story unfolding. Our media ecosystems, designed to capture and monetize attention, naturally amplify crisis and conflict while quieter movements of life continue largely undocumented.
Look around and you'll find communities creating new economic models that serve people rather than extract from them. Indigenous knowledge systems, once dismissed, are now informing sustainable approaches to agriculture, water management, and forest stewardship. Mutual aid networks have emerged spontaneously during crises, revealing our innate capacity for care and cooperation. Scientific understanding is revealing a world far more interdependent and alive than our mechanical models could grasp.
These aren't just hopeful exceptions to a darker rule. They represent different currents in the same river—ones that our habitual ways of seeing often render invisible. Within what appears to be ending, new beginnings are taking shape—not separate from the challenges but woven into the very fabric of this complex moment.
We've been taught to notice certain patterns: to see separation rather than connection, to focus on conflict rather than cooperation, to register breakdown more readily than emergence. This isn't random. Our very ways of seeing and being have been shaped by powerful stories about how the world works—stories that may no longer serve the moment we're in.
What might become possible if we could shift how we sense and respond to our world—not denying what's challenging, but expanding our awareness to include what's emerging alongside it? What if we could perceive more of the whole rather than only the most alarming parts?
This isn't about positive thinking or spiritual bypass. It's about developing literacy in life's actual patterns, about expanding our capacity to perceive the fullness of what's happening rather than only what grabs headlines or triggers fear.
In a world fixated on prediction and control, perhaps the most vital skill is developing the capacity to sense differently—to attune ourselves to currents that don't make the evening news but might be carrying seeds of what comes next.
We must remain connected and committed against genuine threats and defend our core principles with courage. And simultaneously, we must learn to sense what's beginning within what's ending, to feel the pulse of life continuing beneath the surface of our troubled times. Both are essential if we are to meet this moment with the fullness it demands.
If you’re interested in this exploration, Marti Spiegelman and I (Todd Hoskins) are hosting a dialogue in the Connectathon this weekend on “A Perceptual Shift for our Age.”
Related:
- Todd Hoskins (author)
- 2025 (year)
- Topics: Hosting and Facilitation