Apocaloptism

Apocaloptimism – Stories Of Hope And Resilience For Times Of Crisis

The Dig presents an in-depth journalism series featuring stories of Hope, Resilience, and Optimism in times of Crisis and Collapse. 

COVID-19 is a very real public health emergency, however, perhaps even more importantly, it lays bare the fragility, and precariousness of our global civilisation. A critical lack of resilience, equality and transparency exists in the operating system of our world. This is hampering our ability to predict, prevent, deal with, or even make sense of complex crises such as coronavirus pandemics or the climate and ecosystem emergencies. 

We continue to reflexively react to such events as if they were isolated and one-off crises, while, in reality, they are deeply interconnected. Like the climate crisis, many leading scientists warned of the dangers of such global pandemics well before COVID-19 emerged as a global threat.

Evidence also suggests that the increasing prevalence of novel viral outbreaks are intricately connected to human destruction of the natural world. Laura Spinney even points out that “inequality doesn’t just make pandemics worse – it could cause them”.

Crisis afflicts our economy, climate and biodiversity, health, social and food systems and even our ability to make sense of the world through our media.

However, Apocaloptimism remains an outlook we can adopt. It is a decision to focus our energies on the opportunity presented by these crises for positive social and environmental change and increasing interconnection and thriving for humanity and nature. 

Help Us Develop This New Narrative. 

We want to hear from a wide range of people about their experiences with this crisis, with past crises or even dealing with personal crises in their own lives. 

We would love to hear from journalists, readers, academics, scientists or anyone else with an interesting perspective or story regarding optimism, hope or resilience in times of crisis.

We are particularly interested in the perspectives of our elders who may have lived through crises before and in the perspectives of Māori, migrants or other minorities.

Some questions to consider:

  • What gives you strength or hope in the emerging situation?
  • What steps should we be taking to foster a better narrative and increase understanding?
  • What would you like us to cover in this series?
  • What are you doing to be more resilient? 

Join The Conversation

Please Take part in this engagement survey via our New ScoopCitizen Engaged Journalism tools:

Learn more or get involved by signing in to ScoopCitizen in the Survey Window

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ScoopCitizen: An Engaged Journalism Community

The Dig is supported by The Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism.

We are collaborating with the Foundation to deliver ScoopCitizen – an Engaged Journalism community.

We invite you on a journey to dig deeper together on the important issues for Aotearoa :

A new community for pro-democracy engaged journalism

Help us make sense of our shared future narrative through in-depth public interest journalism on The Dig.


Add your voice and drive change

Our pro-democracy Civic journalism approach allows you to learn about and participate in the journalistic and civic discourse on issues that matter to our communities.

We want your input in developing our investigation of this important issue.

It is completely free to join and takes just a few seconds via email, or social media account via our tech partner NextElection.

Who are ScoopCitizens?

ScoopCitizen is a membership-based Engaged journalism service supported by the Scoop Foundation for Public Interest Journalism. Find out more here>>.

Supporters and sponsors are welcome in this endeavour to chart a course for our interconnected post-crisis world.

Learn more or get involved by signing in to ScoopCitizen above.

Biodiversity