 Hello everyone, I'm really glad to be here today. I usually don't speak in churches and it's not my first time that I speak in a church. I had one lecture in one church already but that will stay a secret. But I must reveal you at the very beginning another secret. When I was still a kid younger than a teenager I actually always thought of studying theology. Because as many as many children I was always interested not only in God but mainly generally speaking in the meaning of the universe. In the meantime I studied philosophy and linguistics and as you can see I ended up in the church anyhow speaking about the apocalypse. So it sounds like a Woody Allen movie and it is a Woody Allen movie. There is a beautiful scene, I mean there are many beautiful scenes in Woody Allen's any whole. I guess you all remember this movie with Woody Allen and with Diane Keaton. Where Woody Allen there is a scene where Woody Allen, his name is Alvi in the movie, is you know he's kind of depressed and his mother brings him to a psychiatrist and at the psychiatrist Alvi Woody Allen is a small kid and so on and mother says to the psychiatrist you know my my kid is depressed and he doesn't want to do anything he doesn't even want to go to school and then the psychiatrist turns to Alvi and asks of course but why are you depressed and Alvi responds the universe is expanding and the mother like now is already completely crazy and mad lost her temper completely and ask him but what do you mean by that and then Woody Allen says well the universe is everything and if it's expanding someday it will break apart and that will be the end of everything and then mother is like completely upset and says Alvi what is what what's that of your business you should think about school and so on and Alvi responds but what's the point if the world is ending and then the mother says what does it have to do with it you have to do your homework you are here you are in Brooklyn so instead of thinking about the end of the world think about Brooklyn today and then at the end of this scene you have the psychiatrist who is smoking like a cigarette and says yes yes you just have to think about Brooklyn you are here we have to enjoy our lives and I really like this scene because it was shot I think when any hall was the 70s or something like that but if you remember what was the first reaction towards the children's climate protest all across the world when it started one year ago well you could have read Angela Merkel Teresa May Vladimir Putin and although there are many differences between these world leaders the reaction was the same as the mother's reaction and as a psychiatrist reaction so the kids were saying you know everything is collapsing what you can see is that in the next 20 30 years you will have sea levels rising you will have millions of refugees climate refugees coming from the global south from Bangladesh from Pakistan and so on you already have microplastics as I heard you have it also here I mean I didn't understand much but I guess there is an exhibition taking place but the problem is of course that you already eat microplastics that we all already eat microplastics the scientists have found microplastics in the Arctic that they have found it in Swiss Alps and so on so basically what the kids are saying look at the Amazon is burning if you continue to drill oil and fossil use fossil fuels and so on we are heading towards the end of the world and what did Merkel Putin and all the world leaders say they say go back to school like what's the point you know if that's the question of the kids that's what Greta posed as well because Greta herself if you remember said that she was pretty depressed when she was thinking about the end of the world constantly and then of course everyone said but what's what's the point you know to go to school even if this is happening and that's happening with this scene in Woody Allen but today it's not only the kids anymore look what's happening in Chile look what's happening in Ecuador look what's happening in Iraq with the pro massive protest in Baghdad look what's happening in Algiers look what's happening in Hong Kong I just came from London yesterday look what happened in London you end in the UK during the last month and I'm not talking about Brexit I'm talking about a movement which directly brings us into the topic of today's speech which is the apocalypse a movement whose name is extinction rebellion I don't know whether you watch 12 monkeys that great movie where you have this kind of scenario you know ecologist fighting you have the graffiti and so on and here you have extinction rebellion so it's also protest in London or go back to France for months already you have a movement which is called Gila Jones and we can approach them from different perspectives you can criticize them you can say it's not leading anywhere and so on but they are a reflection a consequence on a system which is producing an ecological apocalypse it is a consequence in the same way that the Chile protests were not about 30 pesos you know that they increased the the price for the public transport and then the people are protesting it is a consequence of 30 years of neoliberalism and Chicago boys running the Chilean economy economy since Pinochet so what you can see here is that we are approaching dangerous time today people are reacting from the children's movement to extinction rebellion to all these heterogeneous movements which are now all across the world and at the same time what you can see today is that a certain apocalyptic side guys I would call it side guys I hope it makes sense in Dutch it makes in German certainly a certain apocalyptic side guys is all around us and not only a side guys but what you can see now and basically what I want to do today since I didn't study theology is to give a philosophical reflection on the notion of the apocalypse a reflection on the notion of the apocalypse as something which is inherently immediately already part of ideology of a certain narrative of if you want even commodification last week and maybe I just need a glass of water I don't know how do you do it in a church and don't get a wine or something but I would really love a glass of water if it's possible and someone to tell me was the time because that I also don't know and it's a bit complicated here in Utrecht because the rings are the bells are ringing constantly so like you don't even know whether so either ring the bell or someone tells me and the glass of water thanks a lot so what you have today when we speak about the apocalypse is definitely I would say on the one hand you have the reality but this is still not the apocalypse and basically as you probably know since we are in a church the apocalypse has to be understood as a revelation not as the end of the world what you have today is that news magazines even books and so on are usually identifying the apocalypse with the end of the world but I think what we have to examine is precisely the apocalypse as the revelation so on the one hand you have the reality the dystopian reality could it be said that this reality is already a sort of revelation micro plastics ice melting nuclear catastrophes and so on so on the one level you have the facts you have the reality you have not only you know apocalyptic maniacs prophets kids saying that we are certainly going into a direction of the end of the world you have thanks a lot you have and his water tanks not mine so we are going in that direction just if you look at the facts according to the scientists on the other hand you have you have a narrative a narrative about the apocalypse and on the third hand I would say you have a commodification of the apocalypse so to say to explain what it means let's take before we come to this church itself and to another church which was burning recently let's take the example of Chernobyl so I guess many of you here have watched the HBO series Chernobyl right no can people just yeah how many of you did watch it how many of you did hear about it okay almost everyone and this proves kind of proves the point that the topic of the end of the world is becoming something which is really a popular topic which doesn't just mean that it's a popular topic it means that it's a topic which is diving deeply into the collective unconscious of all of us the very fact that most of you watched it not most of you but that everyone heard about it tells something not so much about the TV series but about yourself and it says something about the moment in which we are today so last week I happened to be in Chernobyl in Pripyat and then the exclusion zone and basically all the all the levels of approaching the notion of apocalypse you can see there so on the one hand you have the dystopian reality which is brutal facts which is on the one hand an exclusion zone of 30 kilometers where almost no one lives although that's also not kind of true here you already approach ideology you have resettlers you have workers in the Chernobyl power plant and so on and so on and basically but okay that's let's say the reality is there is still a lot of radioactivity there you have to be careful in which direction you walk you always have a geiger around you and so on and according to the guides it's less if you stay one day in Chernobyl it is less radioactivity than an intercontinental flight what you can also see is the reality in the sense that a city which was populated by 50 thousand people like Pripyat is now a ghost city nature came back and so on but here you already approach the ideological level of the notion of apocalypse so first of all the very name of Chernobyl of this site is exclusion zone which is already ideological in the sense that basically what did you do I mean it's the same as you did in colonialism not you as Dutch but everyone and what they did during the Yugoslav Wars you know when Milosevic and Tudjman I'm not blaming you Dutch I can blame my our compatriots as well when Milosevic and Tudjman and Izetbegovic come together and they have a map and then they you know they they draft draw the lines of the future countries and the territories I mean that's being done during colonialism in a much more sinister way as well so in the case of Chernobyl you also have someone who makes basically the count of the Chernobyl explosion as a sort of nuclear bomb and then you have to draw a 30 kilometers exclusion zone but that's already ideology the very term exclusion zone because what's happening outside is that you have villages outside and especially on the Belarusian border where thousands and thousands of people actually were affected by radioactivity and they were never they were never how to say they were never put out of that territory so you can already see ideology there then once you enter Pripyat actually when you enter the exclusion zone there is a first checkpoint and what do you see there there you see the what I call the commodification of apocalypse commodification in the meaning that the apocalypse becomes something objectified something that can be sold something that is commercialized say something that becomes a product so when you come to the checkpoint there you can buy ice cream which says like enjoy ice cream because you're going to Chernobyl or something like that then you can buy souvenirs you can buy t-shirts you can buy whatever you want basically and once you come in it's also interesting because in 2014 and this is correct directly connected to the to the to the TV series as well and the apocalyptic or more precisely post apocalyptic side guys so in 2014 it was 5,000 people visiting the exclusion area last year it was around 60,000 and last week when I was there it was around 80,000 already and I think that next year because the HBO series will only then hit like even more the global market what else that it might be double and so on there are of course other places in the world which are which are you know becoming an object of dark tourism of post apocalyptic tourism and the question is why why is the apocalypse becoming suddenly something which is becoming part of our unconscious so I guess most of you probably remember when the Notre Dame a beautiful church an important historical church an imported religious site was caught by fire in April this year well it was at this kind of event which those of you who are a bit older remember that means that I'm also getting old remember 9-11 who knows maybe Greta and and the children of her age don't perceive that event in the same way we perceive it but definitely for our generation that event was the event which was a kind of event which had well certainly global maybe even universal value when it comes you know you can just test yourself you can probably if you remember the moment where have you been with whom what have you been doing and so on when the when you know when when the planes smashed the Twin Tower and I would say the same goes for the Notre Dame with one little exception which we will now examine most of you here all of you here probably remember right where you have been when the Notre Dame was caught by fire you probably also remember the deep anxiety which you felt you probably also remember all the questions you posed is it you know I remember because I was just flying unfortunately flying into Berlin where I would live there the next month after the Notre Dame not connected but anyhow and I remember you know you come to the bus of the airport you open your your mobile phone and then it's like I don't know like Alfonso Cuaron's children of men or a movie where something happens and suddenly everyone takes the phones out and I look around the bus and everyone is having a phone still don't know what's happening and then suddenly I see that everywhere there is a video of the Notre Dame burning and I get messages so did you see it did you see it and then the first reaction of course you know what's I cannot say what's happening you know is the terrorist attack is it this is this that is and so on and so on so I would say that the Notre Dame for instance immediately also got itself caught in the post apocalyptic side guys that also the Notre Dame itself became part of a bigger narrative and it actually reflects something of the collective unconscious if you want which is now prevailing in the world it's interesting that in 2019 in September so two months ago there was an article in the Financial Times which started by the following sentence this is not Chernobyl so okay there's an article in the Financial Times about the Notre Dame and it starts with a sentence this is not Chernobyl how did we come there why is Notre Dame compared to Chernobyl and you see that the architect so it was a hot summer in Paris so this summer in 2019 June July August September were the hottest ever in recorded human history October now was always the also the hottest ever and we are approaching on November which might become the hottest summer in in few recorded in human history as well so September when the journalists of the Financial Times visits the site of of of of Notre Dame it's 36 degrees 36 degrees in September maybe in a future no one will be anymore wondering about the temperature and no one is because as you can see this reality is also being normalized and she goes around the site with architect who is called Philippe Villeneuve who is also who is the head of restoration of the Notre Dame and basically his sentence this is not Chernobyl was referring to the fact that when the church was burning a lot of lead was you know the metal was was evaporated in the sky and then they you know that if you remember the yellow yellowish mainly yellowish orange reddish red smoke which you saw above the Notre Dame it is a consequence of this metal burning which is also interesting I don't know for those of you who watch the HBO series you probably remember that at one point when the reactor number four blows up you also have a light above I mean even that it's much better shown if you watch a documentary documentary recordings of that event you can see it even to certain degree but in the in the series you have people coming on a bridge which is in the movie in the series called the bridge of death and they've watched you know and you as a spectator you know that well this is not just a beautiful sublime act it's radio activity being released of course when you come to Chernobyl now as a tourist the guide will tell you first that when you pass the bridge that they hate to call it she's an Ukrainian to call it the bridge of death and that is already ideology because people never stood on the bridge and watched this but anyhow what brings this together Chernobyl in Paris and this is not only the fact that the architect said the architect said that this is Chernobyl because Notre Dame is basically toxic he said I mean only if you lick the ground around the Notre Dame you can you can you can end up in hospital but it is still toxic it is not toxic in the same way as as as Chernobyl but what brings them together as well is something else what brings them together is what Emmanuel Kant would call the sublime if you remember in Kant he has a I cannot quote it now but I will try to describe it explain it he has this beautiful image of a storm coming and you know and as you know as a small human being you look at the storm and it's at the same time frightening but it's at the same time exciting in a way I mean you have it in in in that's why you have it in sure in Kierkegaard as well and that's why this is you know the kid the kids today the kid in Woody Allen's any hall and this kind of and the sublime I would say as well brings us closer to the metaphysics of the apocalypse I would say in the sense that it's already existentialism I would say and existentialism is certainly back today in the 21st century what Kierkegaard says is that you know when you are on the on the edge like this off a cliff and you look down and everyone knows this kind of experience and you look down and it's at the same time you're frightened but you might even want to jump you know it's it's this kind of feeling and I think most of us felt something like that even if it's a blast for me to say even with 9 11 even with another dumb and certainly with watching Chernobyl you know a world without people there is a certain fascination with something what I would call the post-apocalyptic sublime sublime and that's something which brings Notre Dame and Chernobyl again in the same in the same context so the experience of this sort of surplus I would call it surplus reality a reality that is literally too much reality like when you watch 9 11 when you watch the Notre Dame when you watch a tornado it's too much reality it almost feels like as if it is not real like I don't know if you remember because my brain is more and more struck structured as a Twitter subconscious or unconscious so it's functioning like that if you remember there was a video when was it etna but a volcano in Italy was erupting and some friends are on a boat and it's erupting and then they are filming of course themselves and so on and then one of them says oh this feels like it's as if I'm in a movie you know you have this already that I mean especially movies can show that the apocalypse is apocalypse is certainly something which gets into the unconscious but at the same time it's too much reality it is as if we saw it in the in the movies and it is as if we are acting in the movie itself so it's it's not just an experience of a singularity in which the universal becomes concrete when the reality namely the universal in the sense that the reality suddenly becomes a whole which you can understand as a whole it is also the moment when the historical Notre Dame is burning for instance becomes the personal I am lending to Berlin and I see all these people and so on and my partner sends me a message did you see what happened with Notre Dame and add any other scenario and at the same time the personal if you imagine again if you if you remember sorry if you remember that recording of people in front of the Notre Dame singing beautifully singing while the smoke is going above the Notre Dame this is when the personal becomes historical at the same time you know it already happened with 9 11 I think but 9 11 was still the first truly global television event I would say I mean you already had people filming it and then someone was doing a comment but I would say the Notre Dame was truly a social media event where you can see how the personal personal becomes the historical how the personal becomes the universal and you're already at the level of of of a narrative and if you're at the level of a narrative you're coming to the level of ideology so I remember very well when after from the Tegel Airport I came to my new apartment in Berlin and opened my computer and just search what was what what what the hell was happening in Paris is another terrorist attack is it something else is it apocalypse or whatever I found an article in New York Times which was the perfect embodiment of well a certain ideological perspective the title of the article was the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral leads to expressions of heartbreak across the world fire at Notre Dame Cathedral leads to expressions of heartbreak across the world so the article observed that the fire that tore down torched through Notre Dame generated an outpouring of grief this is a quote in France and around the world as the symbol of French culture and history burned so as I was reading these New York Times article I was just imagining other people in other corners of the world not in Berlin not in Paris not in in Europe for instance I was imagining parts of the world in Africa Mali Senegal Western Africa countries which were under the French colonial rule were they also heartbroken in the same way New York Times said that everyone in the world was heartbroken you know I was imagining people from Yemen hundreds of thousands we're the also heartbroken you know by this posing these questions I'm not saying that it's not a tragedy it is a tragedy definitely but the problem is that it's a fake universal if you want to put it like that it's a universal for its universalism of the West and a certain religious social political tradition which sees the burning of the Notre Dame as universal so already here you can see ideology unlike New York Times the Al Jazeera offered a much needed counterpart to the Eurocentric narrative in an article which was titled Notre Dame and the case of misplaced empathy and the case of misplaced empathy posing the question why is it that a Catholic cathedral in flames provokes more public grieving than the mass suffering and that of humans and it's an important question not only because it enables us to rethink the empathy felt towards a building which certainly has a historical religious and even personal value but also because it shifts shifts the perspective from the Eurocentric fascination with the West monuments and our own tradition what about all the destroyed ancient monuments not only in Isis but by Western military interventions in Iraq Afghanistan what about all the destroyed monuments in Latin America when the colonialists came or what about ancient forms of imperialism like when Kartak destroyed was destroyed by the Romans or Pezzopolis destroyed was destroyed by Alexander the Great or what about natural catastrophes like when the library of Alexandria was burning or for instance the most famous that was up well I think it's a very it's becoming an even more relevant theologian discussion than it was maybe the Lisbon earthquake you know when you have this kind of events you could even say for the Lisbon earthquake that it was a universal event but again I tend to the person I I'm tempted to go in the direction to say that this was also a western or westernized universal event or take this church for instance to be honest I didn't know much about this church but I always followed the motto of Frederick Jameson the great American cultural scholar who says always historicize always historicize in the sense that try to find what Hegel would call the concrete universal try to find something which connects you to the place in which you are at the moment geographically but also temporarily so basically in linguistics I mean already in this was here you have two levels one is synchrony and the other one is diachrony like you have to with this syntagma syntagmatic level and paradigmatic level in the sense that you have all the words which are here in time as you speak but you also have something like philology which quotes and examines words in history I'm simplifying linguistics now of course speak for hours just about that but the point is that you try to cognitively map yourself in the moment where we are so I'm in the moment that I need another glass of water I'm sorry and we are in a church what brings this church in direct correlation to what I was just talking about about this universalism and the narrative of the apocalypse well are several events this church as I found out yesterday when I arrived also was caught by fire this church if you can believe it was damaged by a tornado although it's not really tornado now by by according to the recent scientific reflections how to call it it was a how did they call it bow echo bow echo right I don't know echo bow something like that yeah bow echo so but what is interesting is that it came in 1674 those of you who know Dutch history better than me we already know that this is a period which is well quite I'm in the church I cannot say fucked up but it's it is from the perspective of of the people who are living there and especially from the Dutch perspective in 1672 that was the year of you know of what what in Dutch history is called the disaster year you know it is a year where you already you are in war Utrecht was completely bankrupt destroyed you have tensions with French with Germany with the Brits and so on and then two years later for this ill-prepared community city which is already plundered and already in a state of crisis thanks a lot yeah I give you this sorry I just I'm a bit sick because I was in Chernobyl so radio it's radioactivity nobody it was very cold in Kiev and there yeah but maybe this radioactivity I mean that that's the thing with radioactivity that it's really scary because you don't see it you know which gives a completely different perspective on the very notion of apocalypse and this is why Gunther Anders for instance one of my favorite German philosophers spoke about the nuclear age as the last epoch the last epoch because if if if you really understand the consequences of nuclear energy or what happened of or what might happen like do you know that France now is planning to build seven six or seven new major nuclear reactors and it's a country which is already dependent 70% on nuclear energy or that Sweden is dependent 48% on nuclear energy so there is a lot of ideology and power interests here which go back to Hans Blix I don't know whether that name says something to you but also to the nuclear lobbies but to come back to the church 1674 was certainly an event which here in this city in this church in Utrecht in Netherlands was perceived as a universal event perhaps it was even perceived as as sublime so it and it wasn't just a again like the Notre Dame it wasn't just an event which was happening here it was an event which was a European event so according to one newspaper in Brussels hailstones fell which were as large as marbles many trees were removed from the earth this is a quote but also many house facades were overthrown in Strasbourg hailstones fell as large as babies heads if you walk down there to Utrecht to the Dom's Cathedral you will see that the present look of the Dom Cathedral is a consequence of this big storm which wasn't a tornado but it's actually much more it was you know I'm right I'm working on a book on the apocalypse now so I'm reading really bizarre things and I read a lot about material meteorology and such stuff and especially meteorological reconstructions of events so I read also about this and so they there are several accounts of farmers who took cover as they saw that this frontal system was coming and they say that it lasted only for 15 minutes and that's the interesting thing so it's not just that according to to scientists and meteorologists it wasn't just a tornado it is a it is a bow echo which means that you have something like a storm which can range from 20 to 200 kilometers and is moving rapidly and is full of thunderstorms is full of rain of strong winds and so on and that was the thing which hit Utrecht Utrecht and it's complete opposite then Hurricane Dorian if you if you recall Hurricane Dorian is interesting we which hit the the Grand Bahamas it's interesting because it is the slowest ever storm recorded in human history so it's opposite than Utrecht Utrecht was this kind of quick thing 15 minutes according to the accounts and then it was finished and everything was more or less destroyed Dorian is more like melancholia by Lars von Trier you know it's just there and it watches that you and you know that it's there and it moves I think that they said that you could walk quicker than what Dorian was moving in my worst obscene post apocalyptic imagination I imagine the apocalypse like that I mean not the apocalypse but the end of the world you know that it will just be this mega storm which is above us and it never disappears and then slowly we are just decaying and and that's already happening today because the point is that you somewhere already the end of the world to someone is happening and that's the point with this slow with this small picture from this church 350 years ago you could at the same time again imagine that for the Dutch citizens is what's the end of the world but for someone in Croatia at that time I mean Croatia didn't even exist I mean now the nationalists would kill me if I said that but in it as a nation stated didn't exist what was happening at that time in Ecuador what was happening or what was important to people in Yemen at that time or in other cities in Constantinople also so on so and the same goes for for for Dorian so my point with this is that with the apocalypse you always you are always already on a certain ideological position and it is a class question in which way you see the apocalypse in which way you perceive the apocalypse in which way you perceive something as a threat to humanity or to your little small selfish life so a beautiful example of this shift of perspective is given by by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in his book distinction probably know about it it's a book from 79 it's called distinction our social critique of the judgment of taste where he where he poses the thesis that taste and especially a static aesthetic aesthetic judgment like because everything what we spoke about now is connected to a certain aesthetic judgment Notre Dame burning is connected to the sublime Dorian which reminds reminds us on the on that my at least me on that the megastorm which is happening on Saturn which is also disappearing by the way so it's an aesthetical judgment and what Pierre Bourdieu said is that if you have judgment like that you are always already also have something what he calls distinction which is a class distinction or to give you another very concrete example by another French one of my favorite French authors Roland Bart who in his out of autobiography subart was an intellectual who was living most of his life with his mother in Paris he was gay he was one of the most inspiring semioticians ever I think and he had a pleasure in the text and but he was he always noticed things which other people wouldn't notice so there is a paragraph in his out of biography where he spoke speaks about coming back to the French village site where he came from before he became an intellectual and he went to a bakery and one morning when he visited this local bakery the woman in the bakery said it's lovely but the heat is lasting too long and you know what this intellectual from Paris Roland Bart answered yeah but the light is so beautiful the woman doesn't answer of course and Roland Bart noticed that a short a short circuit in language of which the most trivial and conversations are the sure occasion I realized that seeing the light relates to class sensibility what does it mean you know that he I noticed this perspective very often on a certain Adriatic Island where I spent a lot of time and unfortunately not enough where you know I had this episode I also came to a local shop there you know it's a very small community and that the tell to one of my favorite a lady's working in the in the in the in the groceries oh it's such a beautiful weather today you know we can swim all day and so on well I immediately forgot that she's working all day she said I didn't swim for 15 years I'm trying to to earn enough money so my my kid can go to university so you know this these are these situations where you encounter the class perspective and that seeing the light in something beautiful as a landscape beautiful as Notre Dame and so on is a class perspective and there is nothing more ideological than the weather itself you know I would put it like that and wouldn't the same apply to the apocalypse or they went which acquire a certain apocalyptic meaning for instance such as the burning of the Notre Dame and I'm slowly finishing because I think the bell will ring soon for instance did did the yellow west in France perceive the fire which caught Notre Dame in the same way that the other people who were singing in front of it perceived it certainly not certainly they had a completely different perspective on the burning Notre Dame than Macron for instance you know because they were fighting against Macron who was cutting who was you know rising same similar situations that as in Chile which was mentioned at the beginning that you have an increase either of public transport or gas transport mainly transport which shows that yeah we need a green you deal as soon as possible because it is about transport it is about fossil fuels it is about this so the yellow west certainly had a different perspective on the burning Notre Dame than Macron and what you could have seen is that within 48 hours nearly a billion of euros was pledged for the reconstruction of the Notre Dame now I'm not saying this is bad I'm not saying you know I'm not the rooty who says that the only good church is the one which is burning this is the anarchist the Spanish is the the anarchist who said that I'm not like that so but my problem is not with the one billion euros which goes into the reconstruction of the Notre Dame my problem is what we already mentioned this is the misplaced empathy it's misplaced empathy and it's very hypocritical when so that the Notre Dame was still burning and then from swap you know the founder of the luxury goods group caring said that he would pledge that he's offering 100 million euros euros and then came other you know mainly the French bourgeoisie Loreal and so on but what was most interesting was an official statement by the French company total you probably know total right total you know shell total and so on these are the same companies which are heavily responsible for the world galloping into a climate catastrophe so the statement of total was the following one total decided to make this donation because Notre Dame de Paris is an iconic monument that represents the group's French roots it is a universal symbol of human aspiration and ingenuity I can agree with all of that total donation also demonstrates that the importance of standing together the importance of standing together which is one of the group's values and the need to share in the outpouring of emotion an exceptional mobilization that this trigger tragedy has triggered worldwide the same as the New York article you can already if you know anything about reading ideology you can already see ideology standing together yet tragedy which was triggered worldwide and so on but in order to deconstruct the ideology and that's one of my main points today as well that the apocalypse always has to be read from the lenses of the critique of ideology is that okay just do the following thing you heard the statement by total now let's make a thought which is about the Notre Dame now let's make a thought experiment and just imagine removing some words in their original statement so it was like this total decided to make this donation because the Amazon rainforest is an iconic monument to our planet's greatness it is a universal symbol of nature's aspiration and ingenuity totals donation also demonstrates the importance of standing together which is one of the group's values and the needs to share in the outpouring of emotion and exceptional mobilization that this tragedy the burning of the Amazon forest rainforest has triggered worldwide well it is no wonder that this sounds like science fiction it would be easier to imagine the superman is flying over Brazil and helping the fire fighters in Brazil than to imagine that total would have such a statement to the Amazon forest and here we make the full circle we come back to Chernobyl we come back to the very beginning when the architect Adam Notre Dame says this is not Chernobyl I think what he should have said is simply this is not the Amazon but the problem would of course be that most of the people will think that he is thinking about a company and not a rainforest so if you have googled as I did you know I mean I mean I'm completely mad like I Google apocalypse every day but just to see what's am I mean it's amazing because then you can find out there is a vodka done in Chernobyl then there is another one then you have the Lego toys you saw the Lego toys apocalyptic work it's made something I was somewhere in a duty-free shop and then you can see it it's huge it looks like the Statue of Liberty completely destroyed like that beautiful beginning scene of Planet of the Apes you know like this and it's an a post-apocalyptic toy for the children where everything is ruined it's post-apocalypse but you have a shop you have surfers and so on but the air is polluted and that well so you can see here as well that the apocalypse is being commodified in the sense that the children from very early age are already being educated in the sense to get accustomed to the idea that the world is such a world you know that you get accustomed that in Belgrade these days the air is so bad the children are not going out not new daily Belgrade and that this is connected directly to the very to the big divide between the century and the periphery of the European Union where Germany for instance is going into energy vendor where in all these beautiful Western countries which I love as well you have a turn toward a sort of green transition so people will drive electric cars and so on but in the meantime Germany will export millions and millions of diesel cars to Hungary Poland Croatia Serbia Bosnia and then you have the biggest number of premature deaths in Hungary not in China because it's one of the most polluted countries in Europe as well so we have all these kinds of problems in the apocalypse it's a class question in the end so why do I think that architects should have said that this is not the Amazon because Notre Dame might be a sort of revelation definitely it might create a collective consciousness about the history and the significance not only of a building which was for instance demolished during the French Revolution where the coronation of Napoleon happened as many many significant historical events and which has a big religious value to many people mainly in the Western world or touristic value such as Chernobyl is getting now but he should have said I think the Amazon because the Amazon forest for me and what's happening there and this is not just the Amazon it's about the microplastics but it's difficult to see a revelation microplastics because you can you cannot even see it but this is the true revelation so unfortunately I think soon I will have to come to the end to respect the time which we which is still left so I can take one more hour yeah a final statement well I have to slow down a bit now well my point today was there were several points and it's an ongoing work but what I want to examine and I think it's really important is the political the ideological the semi-autical the linguistical undertones of the notion of the apocalypse precisely because I'm not a theologian probably I would go in a different direction and examine the apocalypse in a different direction but I think what we have to realize today when the apocalypse is being commodified you have you know the tools you have dark tourism post-apocalyptic tourism you know there is even not only Chernobyl one there is in the Arctic now you have to the cost a lot 10 or 15 thousand pounds or something like that tours which are promoted as you go to a beautiful cruise ship and you see how the ice is melting you will be the last one to see it so it's an interesting phenomenon and it's not only an interesting phenomenon the fact that everyone here even those of you who didn't watch it said that you heard about the HBO series about Chernobyl says something important about our times our times are in my opinion not apocalyptic times but post-apocalyptic times I think the revelation already happened that would be my topic for next time in church next Sunday we meet here and we speak about the revelation but I finish here I hope I can return thanks a lot Miranda for inviting me here and thanks everyone for having this beautiful now you can turn it into wine thanks a lot