Director of the Religioscope Institute in Fribourg, Jean-François Mayer is a specialist in new religious movements. Among his subjects of study: beliefs in the end of the world, which belong to the spiritual realm, but not only... Interview.
Tales of the end of the world have been told throughout the ages, and still exist today. These dire predictions conceal...
74,000 years ago, mankind was on the brink of extinction. The cause was the explosion of a volcano. Genetic studies confirm that the human population numbered only a few thousand individuals at that time. Today, the threat of mass extinction remains.
What would be left after the end of the world, or rather life on Earth, following a nuclear catastrophe or climate change? Certainly not works of art. But perhaps technology. Here's a scenario from a digital art exhibition.
«THE END OF THE WORLD» SPECIAL REPORT | Hong Xiuquan, a failed scholar who failed his exams four times and who, after an existential crisis, encountered God through Christian missionaries, was the catalyst for one of the deadliest armed conflicts in history.
DOSSIER «THE END OF THE WORLD» | They are sometimes referred to as «prophets of the Apocalypse», or «unreasonable catastrophists». However, beyond the caricature, the proponents of this «science of collapse» have a well-constructed, rational discourse worthy of interest.
There's climate change. The growing world population. The depletion of resources. Facts that no one can...
DOSSIER «FIN DU MONDE» | The Taiwan Strait crisis and Kim Jong-un's threats are rekindling tensions between the East Asian powers. With them come fears of nuclear escalation. The atomic bomb is an asset for negotiation, but without room for diplomatic dialogue, it becomes a scarecrow.
Return of war to Europe, nuclear threat, climate crisis... the spectre of the «end of the world» has not gone away....