What a friend of mine semi-affectionately refers to as 'apocaphilia' fascinates me; it feels as though our era is pretty marked by obsessions with the apocalypse and a not-so-subtle desire on the part of many, many people to see it happen, but I do know that apocalyptic references go way back, as far as Egypt's Middle Kingdom, even. I'm not sure I know enough about history to make an educated guess as to whether it's more potent now than in other times, though.
Even my 10-year-old brother is obsessed with zombies right now. Honestly, it exhausts me-- I know why it's culturally and psychologically relevant, there's nothing wrong with it in principle, but in practice it just seems so... escapist, or something. Like people just want to give up. Everyone needs to sit down and watch The Road and take a good, hard look at themselves. We really don't want this to happen! Let's try to make things better!
That's very perceptive. Pessimistic storytelling is very big right now, both in the form of apocalyptic fiction and dystopian fiction. It's getting nuts in sci-fi; like a virus it's the flavor of the moment and it's hard to find sci-fi that doesn't at least have these kinds of undertones. It's an issue in fantasy as well, and has more recently become an aggressive evolved version of the disaster format of action films--leading to what some people derisively call "disaster porn": Hollywood big-budget movies that involve killing and eradicating most of civilization in lurid graphic detail. Nor is this an issue only in America, with other countries favoring pessimistic storytelling to various degrees.
It comes from the good times we're in. Both in material quality of life and in civil liberties, most (Western) people right now have a very comfortable life and have considerable freedom to do what they like. It may not seem like it, but we live in both a golden age and an age of legends, where high technology and high quality of life both rule. That's the good news; all of this apocalypse fiction and such is a sign of the good times.
Most people who benefit from our comfortable way of life aren't able to comprehend that we're living in good times, however, because if one hasn't found fulfillment in life from within oneself, it doesn't matter what external setting one may dwell in--and when that setting is lush and magnificent, it becomes more like a cruel irony to feel so internally wanting. Many people's natural tendency toward insecurity can make this feeling even worse. Also, most people aren't equipped to deal with many of the unnatural stressful particulars imposed upon our society--such as unsatisfying jobs, hydralike social webs, and the attention-sapping barrages of media. On top of everything else, we live in an age where our enemies are hard to touch (existing, variously, as foreign terrorists, huge corporations, or even such abstracts as the environmental pollution caused by our very existence), and our champions are nowhere to be found--often drowned out by the mass media.
This combination of lack of fulfillment amid good times, festering personal inadequacy, and continuing outside stress...leads people to the cynicism which makes them so attracted to stories where civilization is destroyed or corrupted. For some it is an act of vengeance to partake of such stories. For others it is projection. For still others it is the mere escapism which you mentioned.
You're entirely correct that we don't
really want an apocalypse to happen. Those who think they do are either sick in the head or, more likely, deluded. Most of the rest are either cynics who are convinced it will happen and that they have no control to stop it (an allegory for their own lives), or are stressed people who are coping with life's difficulties by indulging in one of the oldest forms of coping: imaginative What-Ifs where you can sock it to everybody who ever did you wrong. When they take in these disaster stories...they're the hero. They're identifying with the people who survive and live on to build a new world.
I echo your wise sentiment. We don't really want this to happen! Let's try to make things better!
