the world ending essay

Apocalyptic Writing Prompts: Writing About the End of the World

Everyone loves a good apocalyptic story, but it can sometimes feel like all the good ideas have already been used. Nothing’s worse than trying to write without inspiration, so I’ve put together a list with a ton of different apocalyptic writing prompts for you to use for whatever you want! Whether you’re just warming up, looking to start a whole novel or comic, or you just want some ideas for a roleplay, you’ll find lots of good inspiration here!

Post-Apocalypse Backstory Ideas

There are many different ways the world could meet its doom. I know when I hear “apocalypse,” zombies are the first thing that comes to mind. But there are tons of options out there if you want a different atmosphere for your apocalyptic story. 

An apocalypse can be brought on by:

• Global Warming
• Natural Disasters
• Nuclear Fallout
• Magic / A Curse
• Demons 
• Alien Invasion 
• Ancient Gods
• Terrorists 
• Robots 

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should give you an idea of how diverse you can make apocalypse stories. Each one would affect the world in different ways, and they all provide interesting and unique scenarios to explore.

If you want some prompts that are more specific to zombies, however, I have another prompt list dedicated to just zombies: Zombie Writing Prompts and Story Ideas . Check it out!

Apocalyptic Writing Prompts

If you’re just looking to warm up with some fun apocalypse scenes, then take a look at some of the quick prompts below. Although they are designed for you to only write one scene, try to think about the backstory leading up to the scene, and the history between the characters. Who knows? You might end up liking the scene well enough to make it into a full story!

• Your protagonists are hunting for food in the woods with no hunting experience. What do they do to try to catch a meal?
• Your protagonists are trying to turn random cans of food into something remotely tasty. When most canned “food” is either pet food or well past its expiration date (or both), they’ve got their work cut out for them. 
• Explore the different perspectives of two characters: one who lived through the apocalypse, and one who was born in the post-apocalyptic world.
• Looking good is almost as important as feeling good. So when the apocalypse began, you weren’t really surprised that your hairstyling expertise was still needed. Walk through a normal day for you, cutting survivor’s hair and listening to their stories. 
• A group of strangers are camping together. They are gathered around a campfire exchanging stories about times gone by, before the apocalypse. What kind of people were they all before? What do they admit, knowing they’ll all go their separate ways in the morning?
• Ever since the cataclysm, members of a new religion have been popping up all over the place. What are the tenets of their faith? What is it about their ideology that sets them apart from other religions?
• An assassination is what tips the domino and plunges the world into chaos and war. Who was assassinated, and why? Describe the series of events that followed to allow for the situation to spiral out of control. 
• Sure, the mutants are bad, but you know It’s humans you really need to be afraid of in the post-apocalypse. Why?
• One character takes advantage of the situation to create a new identity for themself. Who were they before, how do they change, and what was their reason for doing so? Are they more true to themself now, or are they hiding who they really are? 

Apocalypse Story Ideas

If you want to write a longer, more complete story, then here are some prompts to get you started. Unlike the writing prompts above, these are designed to make you think about the entire story, including the setting, backstory, and plot. Feel free to use any of these in your stories!

• Your character has started the apocalypse somehow. Whether it was on purpose, or the result of an experiment gone wrong, take the time to explore the character’s guilt, mindset, and coping mechanisms. If it was on purpose, why? Do they have a savior complex? If it wasn’t on purpose, then how do they feel navigating the world that they destroyed? This story could progress with either someone else coming to stop them, or the character playing an integral part in reversing the catastrophe they helped create. 
• The story starts before the rapture, and everyone is excited about their chance to rise to heaven. Two characters, deeply in love, eagerly await salvation together. When the rapture comes One character is saved by the rapture, but the person they love isn’t. In a panic, they refute their fate, curse the angels, and cast themself down back onto the earth to be with the one they love. Now they must deal with being outcasts from a religion they followed all their lives, and must adapt to the world they now live in. 
• A toxic spill has secretly contaminated the water. People are getting sick and dying and no one knows why. Your protagonists discover the toxins in the water, but they end up getting in over their heads with a government plot to wipe out poor civilizations. They must now accept the responsibility of protecting their town, and bringing down the government that wants them dead. 
• Your neighbors have always been sweet people, but recently, they’ve started behaving differently. They used to let you borrow anything you wanted, so you never expected to get stabbed when you knocked on their door to ask for a cup of sugar. On your way to the hospital, however, you realize that they aren’t the only people that are acting strangely. The streets are in a panic, as people have started attacking each other without a reason. Soon, the truth gets out: demons have started claiming the earth, and they’re possessing any weak-willed person they can get their claws on. You, and a ragtag group of people, have become the world’s last defense against Hell’s armies. 
• Your character is the leader of a powerful post-apocalyptic gang, but unbeknownst to them, insurrection is brewing among their disgruntled henchmen. 
• Your character has never gotten along with their family, but now that the world is going to hell, they find themself locked up with them in an underground bunker. Use that to explore dramatic relations between characters and allow them to resolve (or escalate) disagreements. 
• Scientists have been experimenting on you for as long as you can remember. They’ve also been teaching and shaping you into a very particular type of person—a perfect human. You were always quite proud, and you loved the scientists like family. You always believed they were doing this to help humanity. That’s why you were surprised when they unleashed a virus that only you and the other experiments were immune to, wiping out all human life but you. Can you, the supposed perfect specimens of humanity, rebuild a functional society?
• Your protagonist has a cure for a disease that’s been wiping people out for decades. The only problem? They’re a drug addict, and the cure is a dangerous street drug. The only reason they’re alive is because they’ve unknowingly been abusing the cure this whole time. The issue now is how they’re going to convince the rest of the world that they aren’t completely out of their mind. 
• You are kicked out of your encampment after you lost your arm in a fight, since you weren’t helpful anymore and they assumed you would die anyway. To your surprise, you stumble upon another camp filled with people like you—those who have been injured, or were born with disabilities, and were abandoned for being “useless.” They work together to overcome their individual shortcomings, and not only do they survive, they thrive . You are welcomed in with open arms, and for the first time since the accident, you truly feel happy again. 
• Nature is fighting back, plants evolve to invade human bodies, taking them over and reclaiming them from the inside out. It’s a terribly painful process, and humans are powerless to stop it. Their solution? Burn the planet, and all the plants on it, to the ground. Your protagonist is working against the odds to try to save the planet, but with each acre burned, they can feel it getting harder to breathe. The skies are perpetually blackened, and ash blankets everything in sight. 
• Since the apocalypse broke out, your character has been living in a secluded oasis in the densely forested mountains. They’ve lived there for years, and although it’s lonely, it’s safe and comfortable. Only now, a group of bandits is invading their space, and they have technology your character has never even seen before. 
• A character has had a prophetic dream about the end of the world, but they are dismissed by anyone they try to warn. When the apocalypse happens, exactly as you predicted, everyone suddenly praises them and apologize, and expect the character to provide them guidance with their prophetic dreams—except… the character only ever had the one dream. They played along in the beginning because it felt nice to be appreciated, but now they’re in over your head, and they’re forced to lie to these people to give them hope. But… the truth can’t be concealed forever. 
• The world is breaking apart and now “continents” are each of the different large chunks orbiting around a gravitational center. Each continent develops its own unique and bizarre culture over time, because of their limited contact with the other continents. Your character is one of the few traders that goes between the different continents to facilitate global trade. This is a great opportunity to practice creating your own diverse fictional cultures .
• Most of the futuristic world is automated, and no longer requires humans to function. Everything seems to be operating as normal, with power in every building, damages repaired daily, and supply chains continuing to stock grocery stores with food. Storefronts continue to open and close like clockwork, with their robot cashiers recording every single day with no customers. There are no humans in sight, yet the world continues like they never left. Even homes with robot companions and maids are kept in tip-top shape, awaiting for their household to return from what they must assume is just a very long shift, a long school day.
• It was impossible to tell if scavenged food had been contaminated by the disease, since there is no test for it. Humans, however, show symptoms almost immediately. Write a story from the perspective of a cannibal who’s too paranoid to eat anything except humans, since that’s the only way to be completely sure your meat isn’t contaminated. Be sure to justify their reasoning and have them try to defend their actions. 

Apocalypse Roleplay Plots

Apocalypse scenarios are a popular choice for roleplaying, but it can be difficult to come up with an interesting plot to get started. Although you could use any of the prompts above for roleplay inspiration, some stories just don’t work as well when told by two (or more) people. So I’ve put together a separate list of apocalypse prompts that are specifically designed for cooperative storytelling. As a bonus, some of them come with several different ideas for how your characters can meet, to make it easier for you to write the dreaded starter. 

• Your characters could have been training together in the same programs, and therefore would at least be familiar with each other before the tragedy takes place. 
• One character with professional training meets up with another character (or characters) who has been living successfully in the wilderness without professional training or education. Think of their dynamic like book smart vs. street smart. 
• Both characters believed themselves to be the last human alive, and they encounter each other while they are both searching for food in the same place.
• One character is doing something embarrassing (like singing loudly or acting out a movie scene) when the other character is drawn to the noise.
• The two characters meet up at night, and are so startled by the other person that they instinctively attack. 
• Two characters could emerge from the bunker together. Depending on how large the bunker is, they could be either vaguely familiar with each other, or they could have grown up side by side.
• Only two people in the bunker are able-bodied and young, so they are elected to go out on behalf of everyone else. The only problem? These two have a nasty history together, and now they must put aside years of feuding to work together. 
• One person could emerge from the bunker alone, and discover a new society has been built while they were hiding away. The other character(s) introduced are from this new society. 
• After the war broke out, it wasn’t long before the world began to crumble. A high-ranking general felt deep remorse for the part they played in the war, but they saw no way out of their position. So they hire an assassin to kill them, so their death wouldn’t be viewed as shameful. Rather than kill them, the assassin listens to the General’s story, and helps them fake their own death. The two then run off to reinvent themselves together.
• Your characters were cellmates together, so it isn’t surprising that they stuck together after they escaped.
• Your characters meet up in the midst of the catastrophe, and use the chaos to escape together.
• The prisoners scatter, but they end up meeting again later in the woods around the prison. 
• Your characters grew up together in this town, and they are sick of living under oppressive rule. Once they are old enough to survive on their own (or so they assume), they scale the wall at night and escape together. 
• One character decides to leave town on a mission to deliver food to another nearby town. Along the way, they are attacked by a character who wants their food. This is the first time the character has even heard of people living on the outside, and they begin to consider the possibilities of surviving in the wild. They later meet up with their attacker, and they run away together. 
• Many young people were put in stasis pods when the nuclear apocalypse began, in the hopes that they would emerge once the world was safe again and rebuild society. Not many of the pods survived the thousands of years, but eventually, the monitors measure a safe level of radiation, and the survivors are allowed to wake up. However, the world is nothing like how it used to be. The characters that survived decide to go out together to find a good place to establish the first town, but the new “nature” isn’t keen on making it easy for them. 
• A large group of people set off on an expedition to find food, but they are separated by a sudden snowstorm. Two characters manage to find each other, and now must face off against the cold together until they can get back home. 
• One character goes out alone, and discovers a person from the old world frozen in ice. Morbidly curious, the character decides to thaw the person out with a fire, hoping to take some of their old tools and clothing. However, once the person is out of the ice, the character realizes that they still have a heartbeat. Once they have been brought back for medical attention, they awake, and the character learns that they’ve spent the past 20 years frozen in ice, with no memory of what happened to the world. 
• One character meets a timid young mutant, who is afraid of humans. After showing them the character means no harm, the two become friends and continue to meet in secret to learn about their different societies. 
• One character gets a new sibling when their parents adopt one. However, that character later discovers that their new sibling is secretly a mutant who just ended up being lucky and looking rather human. They both know that if their parents found out, it could be very, very bad…
• Two mutant characters accidentally stray too close to human territory, and now must escape from a life of captivity and experimentation. 

Writing About the End of the World

Writing about the end of the world (as we know it) is a blast, but there’s more to writing that than just having fun. Like dystopia, the apocalypse genre can be a way for writers to express dissatisfaction with the world and vent some of their frustrations out through their characters. These stories can be therapeutic, horrific, exciting, frightening, heartbreaking, and incredibly moving for both the writer and readers alike. 

These stories are important, because they are some of the most memorable stories that exist, and they provide opportunities to explore many different ideas of working together, overcoming difficult challenges, and emerging from bad situations as better, more capable people. So yes, writing about characters living through an apocalypse or struggling in a post-apocalyptic world is fun, but it can end up accomplishing a lot more than that for your readers. 

These stories are hopeful, and as I’ve said before, humans are suckers for hope. 

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20 Ways the World Could End

Are we in danger of being erased from the universe here we look at the factors that could doom humanity: natural disasters, human-triggered cataclysms, willful self-destruction, and greater forces directed against us..

We've had a good run of it. In the 500,000 years Homo sapiens has roamed the land we've built cities, created complex languages, and sent robotic scouts to other planets. It's difficult to imagine it all coming to an end. Yet 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors.

In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the " Doomsday argument ," a statistical way to judge when we might join them. If humans were to survive a long time and spread through the galaxy, then the total number of people who will ever live might number in the trillions. By pure odds, it's unlikely that we would be among the very first hundredth of a percent of all those people.

Or turn the argument around: How likely is it that this generation will be the one unlucky one? Something like one fifth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today. The odds of being one of the people to witness doomsday are highest when there is the largest number of witnesses around — so now is not such an improbable time.

Human activity is severely disrupting almost all life on the planet, which surely doesn't help matters. The current rate of extinctions is, by some estimates, 10,000 times the average in the fossil record. At present, we may worry about snail darters and red squirrels in abstract terms. But the next statistic on the list could be us.

Natural Disasters:

1. asteroid impact.

Once a disaster scenario gets the cheesy Hollywood treatment, it's hard to take it seriously. But there is no question that a cosmic interloper will hit Earth, and we won't have to wait millions of years for it to happen. In 1908 a 200-foot-wide comet fragment slammed into the atmosphere and exploded over the Tunguska region in Siberia, Russia, with nearly 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Astronomers estimate similar-sized events occur every one to three centuries.

Benny Peiser, an anthropologist-cum-pessimist at Liverpool John Moores University in England, claims that impacts have repeatedly disrupted human civilization. As an example, he says one killed 10,000 people in the Chinese city of Chi'ing-yang in 1490. Many scientists question his interpretations: Impacts are most likely to occur over the ocean, and small ones that happen over land are most likely to affect unpopulated areas. But with big asteroids, it doesn't matter much where they land. Objects more than a half-mile wide — which strike Earth every 250,000 years or so — would touch off firestorms followed by global cooling from dust kicked up by the impact. Humans would likely survive, but civilization might not.

An asteroid five miles wide would cause major extinctions, like the one that may have marked the end of the age of dinosaurs. For a real chill, look to the Kuiper belt, a zone just beyond Neptune that contains roughly 100,000 ice-balls more than 50 miles in diameter. The Kuiper belt sends a steady rain of small comets earthward. If one of the big ones headed right for us, that would be it for pretty much all higher forms of life, even cockroaches.

2. Gamma-ray Burst 

If you could watch the sky with gamma-ray vision, you might think you were being stalked by cosmic paparazzi. Once a day or so, you would see a bright flash appear, briefly outshine everything else, then vanish.

These gamma-ray bursts, astrophysicists recently learned, originate in distant galaxies and are unfathomably powerful — as much as 10 quadrillion (a one followed by 16 zeros) times as energetic as the sun. The bursts probably result from the merging of two collapsed stars. Before the cataclysmal event, such a double star might be almost completely undetectable, so we'd likely have no advance notice if one is lurking nearby. Once the burst begins, however, there would be no missing its fury. At a distance of 1,000 light-years — farther than most of the stars you can see on a clear night — it would appear about as bright as the sun.

Earth's atmosphere would initially protect us from most of the burst's deadly X rays and gamma rays, but at a cost. The potent radiation would cook the atmosphere, creating nitrogen oxides that would destroy the ozone layer. Without the ozone layer, ultraviolet rays from the sun would reach the surface at nearly full force, causing skin cancer and, more seriously, killing off the tiny photosynthetic plankton in the ocean that provide oxygen to the atmosphere and bolster the bottom of the food chain. All the gamma-ray bursts observed so far have been extremely distant, which implies the events are rare. Scientists understand so little about these explosions, however, that it's difficult to estimate the likelihood of one detonating in our galactic neighborhood.

3. Collapse of the Vacuum 

In the book  Cat's Cradle,  Kurt Vonnegut popularized the idea of "ice-nine," a form of water that is far more stable than the ordinary kind, so it is solid at room temperature. Unleash a bit of it, and suddenly all water on Earth transforms to ice-nine and freezes solid. Ice-nine was a satirical invention, but an abrupt, disastrous phase transition is a possibility.

Very early in the history of the universe, according to a leading cosmological model, empty space was full of energy. This state of affairs, called a false vacuum, was highly precarious. A new, more stable kind of vacuum appeared and, like ice-nine, it quickly took over. This transition unleashed a tremendous amount of energy and caused a brief runaway expansion of the cosmos.

It is possible that another, even more stable kind of vacuum exists, however. As the universe expands and cools, tiny bubbles of this new kind of vacuum might appear and spread at nearly the speed of light. The laws of physics would change in their wake, and a blast of energy would dash everything to bits. "It makes for a beautiful story, but it's not very likely," says Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey. He says he worries more about threats that scientists are more certain of — such as rogue black holes.

4. Rogue Black Holes 

Our galaxy is full of black holes, collapsed stellar corpses just a dozen miles wide. How full? Tough question. After all, they're called black holes for a reason. Their gravity is so strong they swallow everything, even the light that might betray their presence.

David Bennett of Notre Dame University in Indiana managed to spot two black holes recently by the way they distorted and amplified the light of ordinary, more distant stars. Based on such observations, and even more on theoretical arguments, researchers guesstimate there are about 10 million black holes in the Milky Way. These objects orbit just like other stars, meaning that it is not terribly likely that one is headed our way.

But if a normal star were moving toward us, we'd know it. With a black hole there is little warning. A few decades before a close encounter, at most, astronomers would observe a strange perturbation in the orbits of the outer planets. As the effect grew larger, it would be possible to make increasingly precise estimates of the location and mass of the interloper.

The black hole wouldn't have to come all that close to Earth to bring ruin; just passing through the solar system would distort all of the planets' orbits. Earth might get drawn into an elliptical path that would cause extreme climate swings, or it might be ejected from the solar system and go hurtling to a frigid fate in deep space.

5. Giant Solar Flares 

Solar flares — more properly known as coronal mass ejections — are enormous magnetic outbursts on the sun that bombard Earth with a torrent of high-speed subatomic particles. Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field negate the potentially lethal effects of ordinary flares. But while looking through old astronomical records, Bradley Schaefer of Yale University found evidence that some perfectly normal-looking, sunlike stars can brighten briefly by up to a factor of 20. Schaefer believes these stellar flickers are caused by superflares, millions of times more powerful than their common cousins. Within a few hours, a superflare on the sun could fry Earth and begin disintegrating the ozone layer (see #2). Although there is persuasive evidence that our sun doesn't engage in such excess, scientists don't know why superflares happen at all, or whether our sun could exhibit milder but still disruptive behavior. And while too much solar activity could be deadly, too little of it is problematic as well. Sallie Baliunas at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says many solar-type stars pass through extended quiescent periods, during which they become nearly 1 percent dimmer. That might not sound like much, but a similar downturn in the sun could send us into another ice age. Baliunas cites evidence that decreased solar activity contributed to 17 of the 19 major cold episodes on Earth in the last 10,000 years.

6. Reversal of Earth's Magnetic Field 

Every few hundred thousand years Earth's magnetic field dwindles almost to nothing for perhaps a century, then gradually reappears with the north and south poles flipped. The last such reversal was 780,000 years ago, so we may be overdue. Worse, the strength of our magnetic field has decreased about 5 percent in the past century.

Why worry in an age when GPS has made compasses obsolete? Well, the magnetic field deflects particle storms and cosmic rays from the sun, as well as even more energetic subatomic particles from deep space. Without magnetic protection, these particles would strike Earth's atmosphere, eroding the already beleaguered ozone layer (see #5).

Also, many creatures navigate by magnetic reckoning. A magnetic reversal might cause serious ecological mischief. One big caveat: "There are no identifiable fossil effects from previous flips," says Sten Odenwald of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. "This is most curious." Still, a disaster that kills a quarter of the population, like the Black Plague in Europe, would hardly register as a blip in fossil records.

7. Flood-basalt Volcanism 

In 1783, the Laki volcano in Iceland erupted, spitting out three cubic miles of lava. Floods, ash, and fumes wiped out 9,000 people and 80 percent of the livestock. The ensuing starvation killed a quarter of Iceland's population. Atmospheric dust caused winter temperatures to plunge by 9 degrees in the newly independent United States.

And that was just a baby's burp compared with what the Earth can do. Sixty-five million years ago, a plume of hot rock from the mantle burst through the crust in what is now India. Eruptions raged century after century, ultimately unleashing a quarter-million cubic miles of lava — the Laki eruption 100,000 times over. Some scientists still blame the Indian outburst, not an asteroid, for the death of the dinosaurs. An earlier, even larger event in Siberia occurred just about the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, the most thorough extermination known to paleontology. At that time 95 percent of all species were wiped out.

Sulfurous volcanic gases produce acid rains. Chlorine-bearing compounds present yet another threat to the fragile ozone layer — a noxious brew all around. While they are causing short-term destruction, volcanoes also release carbon dioxide that yields long-term greenhouse-effect warming.The last big pulse of flood-basalt volcanism built the Columbia River plateau about 17 million years ago. We're ripe for another.

8. Global Epidemics 

If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack. The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has produced a similar death toll and is still going strong.

From 1980 to 1992, reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United States rose 58 percent. Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread faster than ever.

Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into the New World.

Human-Triggered Disasters:

9. global warming .

The Earth is getting warmer, and scientists mostly agree that humans bear some blame. It's easy to see how global warming could flood cities and ruin harvests. More recently, researchers like Paul Epstein of Harvard Medical School have raised the alarm that a balmier planet could also assist the spread of infectious disease by providing a more suitable climate for parasites and spreading the range of tropical pathogens (see #8). That could include crop diseases which, combined with substantial climate shifts, might cause famine.

Effects could be even more dramatic. At present, atmospheric gases trap enough heat close to the surface to keep things comfortable. Increase the global temperature a bit, however, and there could be a bad feedback effect, with water evaporating faster, freeing water vapor (a potent greenhouse gas), which traps more heat, which drives carbon dioxide from the rocks, which drives temperatures still higher. Earth could end up much like Venus, where the high on a typical day is 900 degrees Fahrenheit. It would probably take a lot of warming to initiate such a runaway greenhouse effect, but scientists have no clue where exactly the tipping point lies.

10. Ecosystem Collapse  

Images of slaughtered elephants and burning rain forests capture people's attention, but the big problem — the overall loss of biodiversity — is a lot less visible and a lot more serious. Billions of years of evolution have produced a world in which every organism's welfare is intertwined with that of countless other species.

A recent study of Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior offers an example. Snowy winters encourage wolves to hunt in larger packs, so they kill more moose. The decline in moose population allows more balsam fir saplings to live. The fir trees pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which in turn influences the climate. It's all connected. To meet the demands of the growing population, we are clearing land for housing and agriculture, replacing diverse wild plants with just a few varieties of crops, transporting plants and animals, and introducing new chemicals into the environment.

At least 30,000 species vanish every year from human activity, which means we are living in the midst of one of the greatest mass extinctions in Earth's history. Stephen Kellert, a social ecologist at Yale University, sees a number of ways people might upset the delicate checks and balances in the global ecology. New patterns of disease might emerge (see #8), he says, or pollinating insects might become extinct, leading to widespread crop failure. Or as with the wolves of Isle Royale, the consequences might be something we'd never think of, until it's too late.

11. Biotech Disaster 

While we are extinguishing natural species, we're also creating new ones through genetic engineering. Genetically modified crops can be hardier, tastier, and more nutritious. Engineered microbes might ease our health problems. And gene therapy offers an elusive promise of fixing fundamental defects in our DNA.

Then there are the possible downsides. Although there is no evidence indicating genetically modified foods are unsafe, there are signs that the genes from modified plants can leak out and find their way into other species. Engineered crops might also foster insecticide resistance. Longtime skeptics like Jeremy Rifkin worry that the resulting superweeds and superpests could further destabilize the stressed global ecosystem (see #9).

Altered microbes might prove to be unexpectedly difficult to control. Scariest of all is the possibility of the deliberate misuse of biotechnology. A terrorist group or rogue nation might decide that anthrax isn't nasty enough and then try to put together, say, an airborne version of the Ebola virus. Now there's a showstopper.

12. Particle Accelerator Mishap 

Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, raved that a particle accelerator experiment could set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world. Surprisingly, many sober-minded physicists have had the same thought. Normally their anxieties come up during private meetings, amidst much scribbling on the backs of used envelopes. Recently the question went public when London's  Sunday Times  reported that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) on Long Island, New York, might create a subatomic black hole that would slowly nibble away our planet.

Alternately, it might create exotic bits of altered matter, called strangelets, that would obliterate whatever ordinary matter they met. To assuage RHIC's jittery neighbors, the lab's director convened a panel that rejected both scenarios as pretty much impossible. Just for good measure, the panel also dismissed the possibility that RHIC would trigger a phase transition in the cosmic vacuum energy (see #3).

These kinds of reassurances follow the tradition of the 1942 "LA-602" report, a once-classified document that explained why the detonation of the first atomic bomb almost surely would not set the atmosphere on fire. The RHIC physicists did not, however, reject the fundamental possibility of the disasters. They argued that their machine isn't nearly powerful enough to make a black hole or destabilize the vacuum. Oh, well. We can always build a bigger accelerator.

13. Nanotechnology Disaster  

Before you've even gotten the keyboard dirty, your home computer is obsolete, largely because of incredibly rapid progress in miniaturizing circuits on silicon chips. Engineers are using the same technology to build crude, atomic-scale machines, inventing a new field as they go called nanotechnology.

Within a few decades, maybe sooner, it should be possible to build microscopic robots that can assemble and replicate themselves. They might perform surgery from inside a patient, build any desired product from simple raw materials, or explore other worlds. All well and good if the technology works as intended.

Then again, consider what K. Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute calls the "grey goo problem" in his book  Engines of Creation,  a cult favorite among the nanotech set. After an industrial accident, he writes, bacteria-sized machines, "could spread like blowing pollen, replicate swiftly, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days." And Drexler is actually a strong proponent of the technology. More pessimistic souls, such as Bill Joy, a cofounder of Sun Microsystems, envision nano-machines as the perfect precision military or terrorist tools.

14. Environmental Toxins 

From Donora, Pennsylvania, to Bhopal, India, modern history abounds with frightening examples of the dangers of industrial pollutants. But the poisoning continues. In major cities around the world, the air is thick with diesel particulates, which the National Institutes of Health now considers a carcinogen.

Heavy metals from industrial smokestacks circle the globe, even settling in the pristine snows of Antarctica. Intensive use of pesticides in farming guarantees runoff into rivers and lakes. In high doses, dioxins can disrupt fetal development and impair reproductive function — and dioxins are everywhere. Your house may contain polyvinyl chloride pipes, wallpaper, and siding, which belch dioxins if they catch fire or are incinerated.

There are also the unknown risks to think about. Every year NIH adds to its list of cancer-causing substances — the number is up to 218. Theo Colburn of the World Wildlife Fund argues that dioxins and other, similar chlorine-bearing compounds mimic the effects of human hormones well enough that they could seriously reduce fertility. Many other scientists dispute her evidence, but if she's right, our chemical garbage could ultimately threaten our survival.

Willful Self-Destruction:

15. global war .

Together, the United States and Russia still have almost 19,000 active nuclear warheads. Nuclear war seems unlikely today, but a dozen years ago the demise of the Soviet Union also seemed rather unlikely. Political situations evolve; the bombs remain deadly.

There is also the possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange. And a ballistic missile defense system, given current technology, will catch only a handful of stray missiles — assuming it works at all. Other types of weaponry could have global effects as well. Japan began experimenting with biological weapons after World War I, and both the United States and the Soviet Union experimented with killer germs during the cold war.

Compared with atomic bombs, bioweapons are cheap, simple to produce, and easy to conceal. They are also hard to control, although that unpredictability could appeal to a terrorist organization. John Leslie, a philosopher at the University of Guelph in Ontario, points out that genetic engineering might permit the creation of "ethnic" biological weapons that are tailored to attack primarily one ethnic group (see #11).

16. Robots Take Over 

People create smart robots, which turn against us and take over the world. Yawn. We've seen this in movies, TV, and comic books for decades. After all these years, look around and still — no smart robots. Yet Hans Moravec, one of the founders of the robotics department of Carnegie Mellon University, remains a believer. By 2040, he predicts, machines will match human intelligence, and perhaps human consciousness. Then they'll get even better. He envisions an eventual symbiotic relationship between human and machine, with the two merging into "postbiologicals" capable of vastly expanding their intellectual power.

Marvin Minsky, an artificial-intelligence expert at MIT, foresees a similar future: People will download their brains into computer-enhanced mechanical surrogates and log into nearly boundless files of information and experience. Whether this counts as the end of humanity or the next stage in evolution depends on your point of view. Minsky's vision might sound vaguely familiar.

After the first virtual-reality machines hit the marketplace around 1989, feverish journalists hailed them as electronic LSD, trippy illusion machines that might entice the user in and then never let him out. Sociologists fretted that our culture, maybe even our species, would whither away. When the actual experience of virtual reality turned out to be more like trying to play Pac-Man with a bowling ball taped to your head, the talk died down. To his credit, Minsky recognizes that the merger of human and machine lies quite a few years away.

17. Mass Insanity 

While physical health has improved in most parts of the world over the past century, mental health is getting worse. The World Health Organization estimates that 500 million people around the world suffer from a psychological disorder. By 2020, depression will likely be the second leading cause of death and lost productivity, right behind cardiovascular disease.

Increasing human life spans may actually intensify the problem, because people have more years to experience the loneliness and infirmity of old age. Americans over 65 already are disproportionately likely to commit suicide. Gregory Stock, a biophysicist at the University of California at Los Angeles, believes medical science will soon allow people to live to be 200 or older. If such an extended life span becomes common, it will pose unfathomable social and psychological challenges.

Perhaps 200 years of accumulated sensations will overload the human brain, leading to a new kind of insanity or fostering the spread of doomsday cults, determined to reclaim life's endpoint. Perhaps the current trends of depression and suicide among the elderly will continue. One possible solution — promoting a certain kind of mental well-being with psychoactive drugs such as Prozac — heads into uncharted waters. Researchers have no good data on the long-term effects of taking these medicines.

A Greater Force Is Directed Against Us:

18. alien invasion .

At the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a cadre of dedicated scientists sifts through radio static in search of a telltale signal from an alien civilization. So far, nothing. Now suppose the long-sought message arrives. Not only do the aliens exist, they are about to stop by for a visit. And then ... any science-fiction devotee can tell you what could go wrong.

But the history of human exploration and exploitation suggests the most likely danger is not direct conflict. Aliens might want resources from our solar system (Earth's oceans, perhaps, full of hydrogen for refilling a fusion-powered spacecraft) and swat us aside if we get in the way, as we might dismiss mosquitoes or beetles stirred up by the logging of a rain forest. Aliens might unwittingly import pests with a taste for human flesh, much as Dutch colonists reaching Mauritius brought cats, rats and pigs that quickly did away with the dodo. Or aliens might accidentally upset our planet or solar system while carrying out some grandiose interstellar construction project.

The late physicist Gerard O'Neill speculated that contact with extraterrestrial visitors could also be socially disastrous. "Advanced western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come in contact with, even in those cases where every attempt was made to protect and guard the primitive civilization," he said in a 1979 interview. "I don't see any reason why the same thing would not happen to us."

19. Divine Intervention 

Judaism has the Book of Daniel; Christianity has the Book of Revelation; Islam has the coming of the Mahdi; Zoroastrianism has the countdown to the arrival of the third son of Zoroaster. The stories and their interpretations vary widely, but the underlying concept is similar: God intervenes in the world, bringing history to an end and ushering in a new moral order.

Apocalyptic thinking runs at least back to Egyptian mythology and right up to Heaven's Gate and Y2K mania. More worrisome, to the nonbelievers at least, are the doomsday cults that prefer to take holy retribution into their own hands. In 1995, members of the Aum Shinri Kyo sect unleashed sarin nerve gas in a Tokyo subway station, killing 12 people and injuring more than 5,000. Had things gone as intended, the death toll would have been hundreds of times greater. A more determined group armed with a more lethal weapon — nuclear, biological, nanotechnological even — could have done far more damage.

20. Someone Wakes Up and Realizes it Was All a Dream 

Are we living a shadow existence that only fools us into thinking it is real? This age-old philosophical question still reverberates through cultural thought, from the writings of William S. Burrows to the cinematic mind games of  The Matrix.  Hut of the Institute of Advanced Studies sees an analogy to the danger of the collapse of the vacuum. Just as our empty space might not be the true, most stable form of the vacuum, what we call reality might not be the true, most stable form of existence.

In the fourth century B.C., Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu framed the question in more poetic terms. He described a vivid dream. In it, he was a butterfly who had no awareness of his existence as a person. When he awoke, he asked: "Was I before Chuang Tzu who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being Chuang Tzu?"

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So much is at stake in writing a conclusion. This is, after all, your last chance to persuade your readers to your point of view, to impress yourself upon them as a writer and thinker. And the impression you create in your conclusion will shape the impression that stays with your readers after they've finished the essay.

The end of an essay should therefore convey a sense of completeness and closure as well as a sense of the lingering possibilities of the topic, its larger meaning, its implications: the final paragraph should close the discussion without closing it off.

To establish a sense of closure, you might do one or more of the following:

• Conclude by linking the last paragraph to the first, perhaps by reiterating a word or phrase you used at the beginning.
• Conclude with a sentence composed mainly of one-syllable words. Simple language can help create an effect of understated drama.
• Conclude with a sentence that's compound or parallel in structure; such sentences can establish a sense of balance or order that may feel just right at the end of a complex discussion.

To close the discussion without closing it off, you might do one or more of the following:

• Conclude with a quotation from or reference to a primary or secondary source, one that amplifies your main point or puts it in a different perspective. A quotation from, say, the novel or poem you're writing about can add texture and specificity to your discussion; a critic or scholar can help confirm or complicate your final point. For example, you might conclude an essay on the idea of home in James Joyce's short story collection,  Dubliners , with information about Joyce's own complex feelings towards Dublin, his home. Or you might end with a biographer's statement about Joyce's attitude toward Dublin, which could illuminate his characters' responses to the city. Just be cautious, especially about using secondary material: make sure that you get the last word.
• Conclude by setting your discussion into a different, perhaps larger, context. For example, you might end an essay on nineteenth-century muckraking journalism by linking it to a current news magazine program like  60 Minutes .
• Conclude by redefining one of the key terms of your argument. For example, an essay on Marx's treatment of the conflict between wage labor and capital might begin with Marx's claim that the "capitalist economy is . . . a gigantic enterprise of dehumanization "; the essay might end by suggesting that Marxist analysis is itself dehumanizing because it construes everything in economic -- rather than moral or ethical-- terms.
• Conclude by considering the implications of your argument (or analysis or discussion). What does your argument imply, or involve, or suggest? For example, an essay on the novel  Ambiguous Adventure , by the Senegalese writer Cheikh Hamidou Kane, might open with the idea that the protagonist's development suggests Kane's belief in the need to integrate Western materialism and Sufi spirituality in modern Senegal. The conclusion might make the new but related point that the novel on the whole suggests that such an integration is (or isn't) possible.

Finally, some advice on how not to end an essay:

• Don't simply summarize your essay. A brief summary of your argument may be useful, especially if your essay is long--more than ten pages or so. But shorter essays tend not to require a restatement of your main ideas.
• Avoid phrases like "in conclusion," "to conclude," "in summary," and "to sum up." These phrases can be useful--even welcome--in oral presentations. But readers can see, by the tell-tale compression of the pages, when an essay is about to end. You'll irritate your audience if you belabor the obvious.
• Resist the urge to apologize. If you've immersed yourself in your subject, you now know a good deal more about it than you can possibly include in a five- or ten- or 20-page essay. As a result, by the time you've finished writing, you may be having some doubts about what you've produced. (And if you haven't immersed yourself in your subject, you may be feeling even more doubtful about your essay as you approach the conclusion.) Repress those doubts. Don't undercut your authority by saying things like, "this is just one approach to the subject; there may be other, better approaches. . ."

Copyright 1998, Pat Bellanca, for the Writing Center at Harvard University

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How to Conclude an Essay (with Examples)

Last Updated: July 22, 2024 Fact Checked

Writing a Strong Conclusion

What to avoid, brainstorming tricks.

This article was co-authored by Jake Adams and by wikiHow staff writer, Aly Rusciano . Jake Adams is an academic tutor and the owner of Simplifi EDU, a Santa Monica, California based online tutoring business offering learning resources and online tutors for academic subjects K-College, SAT & ACT prep, and college admissions applications. With over 14 years of professional tutoring experience, Jake is dedicated to providing his clients the very best online tutoring experience and access to a network of excellent undergraduate and graduate-level tutors from top colleges all over the nation. Jake holds a BS in International Business and Marketing from Pepperdine University. There are 8 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,219,171 times.

So, you’ve written an outstanding essay and couldn’t be more proud. But now you have to write the final paragraph. The conclusion simply summarizes what you’ve already written, right? Well, not exactly. Your essay’s conclusion should be a bit more finessed than that. Luckily, you’ve come to the perfect place to learn how to write a conclusion. We’ve put together this guide to fill you in on everything you should and shouldn’t do when ending an essay. Follow our advice, and you’ll have a stellar conclusion worthy of an A+ in no time.

Tips for Ending an Essay

• Rephrase your thesis to include in your final paragraph to bring the essay full circle.
• End your essay with a call to action, warning, or image to make your argument meaningful.
• Keep your conclusion concise and to the point, so you don’t lose a reader’s attention.
• Do your best to avoid adding new information to your conclusion and only emphasize points you’ve already made in your essay.

• “All in all”
• “Ultimately”
• “Furthermore”
• “As a consequence”
• “As a result”

• Make sure to write your main points in a new and unique way to avoid repetition.

• Let’s say this is your original thesis statement: “Allowing students to visit the library during lunch improves campus life and supports academic achievement.”
• Restating your thesis for your conclusion could look like this: “Evidence shows students who have access to their school’s library during lunch check out more books and are more likely to complete their homework.”
• The restated thesis has the same sentiment as the original while also summarizing other points of the essay.

• “When you use plastic water bottles, you pollute the ocean. Switch to using a glass or metal water bottle instead. The planet and sea turtles will thank you.”
• “The average person spends roughly 7 hours on their phone a day, so there’s no wonder cybersickness is plaguing all generations.”
• “Imagine walking on the beach, except the soft sand is made up of cigarette butts. They burn your feet but keep washing in with the tide. If we don’t clean up the ocean, this will be our reality.”
• “ Lost is not only a show that changed the course of television, but it’s also a reflection of humanity as a whole.”
• “If action isn’t taken to end climate change today, the global temperature will dangerously rise from 4.5 to 8 °F (−15.3 to −13.3 °C) by 2100.”

• Focus on your essay's most prevalent or important parts. What key points do you want readers to take away or remember about your essay?

• For instance, instead of writing, “That’s why I think that Abraham Lincoln was the best American President,” write, “That’s why Abraham Lincoln was the best American President.”
• There’s no room for ifs, ands, or buts—your opinion matters and doesn’t need to be apologized for!

• For instance, words like “firstly,” “secondly,” and “thirdly” may be great transition statements for body paragraphs but are unnecessary in a conclusion.

• For instance, say you began your essay with the idea that humanity’s small sense of sense stems from space’s vast size. Try returning to this idea in the conclusion by emphasizing that as human knowledge grows, space becomes smaller.

• For example, you could extend an essay on the television show Orange is the New Black by bringing up the culture of imprisonment in America.

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• ↑ https://www.uts.edu.au/current-students/support/helps/self-help-resources/grammar/transition-signals
• ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/common_writing_assignments/argument_papers/conclusions.html
• ↑ http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/conclude.html
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/ending-essay-conclusions
• ↑ https://www.pittsfordschools.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=542&dataid=4677&FileName=conclusions1.pdf
• ↑ https://www.cuyamaca.edu/student-support/tutoring-center/files/student-resources/how-to-write-a-good-conclusion.pdf
• ↑ https://library.sacredheart.edu/c.php?g=29803&p=185935

About This Article

To end an essay, start your conclusion with a phrase that makes it clear your essay is coming to a close, like "In summary," or "All things considered." Then, use a few sentences to briefly summarize the main points of your essay by rephrasing the topic sentences of your body paragraphs. Finally, end your conclusion with a call to action that encourages your readers to do something or learn more about your topic. In general, try to keep your conclusion between 5 and 7 sentences long. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to avoid common pitfalls when writing an essay conclusion, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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How to End a College Admissions Essay | 4 Winning Strategies

Published on October 16, 2021 by Meredith Testa . Revised on May 31, 2023.

The ending of your college essay should leave your reader with a sense of closure and a strong final impression.

Table of contents

Endings to avoid, option 1: return to the beginning, option 2: look forward, option 3: reveal your main point, option 4: end on an action, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

A bad conclusion can bring your whole essay down, so make sure to avoid these common mistakes.

Summarizing

Unlike an academic essay, an admissions essay shouldn’t restate your points. Avoid ending with a summary; there’s no need to repeat what you’ve already written.

Phrases like “in conclusion,” “overall,” or “to sum it up” signal that you have nothing to add to what you’ve already written, so an admissions officer may stop reading.

Stating the obvious

Instead of stating the obvious, let your work speak for itself and allow readers to draw their own conclusions. If your essay details various times that you worked tirelessly to go above and beyond, don’t finish it by stating “I’m hardworking.” Admissions officers are smart enough to figure that out on their own.

You should also avoid talking about how you hope to be accepted. Admissions officers know you want to be accepted—that’s why you applied! It’s okay to connect what you discuss in the essay to your potential future career or college experience, but don’t beg for admission. Stay focused on your essay’s core topic.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Many successful essays follow a “sandwich,” or full-circle, structure , meaning that they start with some image or idea, veer away from it in the middle, and then return to it at the end.

This structure is clean, self-contained, and satisfying for readers, so it’s a great choice if it works with the topic you’ve chosen.

In the “sandwich” essay outlined below, a student discusses his passion for musical theater. Instead of simply stating that interest, his essay starts with a funny anecdote about a minor fire that erupted on set. At the end, it returns to this anecdote, creating a sense of closure.

• Intro: I may be the world’s worst firefighter.
• Flashback to working on the school musical
• Demonstrate my passion for theatre
• Detail the story of the theater set catching fire
• Show how I made the most of the situation
• Conclusion: I proved my value as a director, an actor, and a writer that week一even if I was a terrible firefighter.

Many successful essays end by looking forward to the future. These endings are generally hopeful and positive—always great qualities in an admissions essay—and often connect the student to the college or their academic goals.

Although these endings can be highly effective, it can be challenging to keep them from sounding cliché. Keep your ending specific to you, and don’t default to generalities, which can make your essay seem bland and unoriginal.

Below are a good and a bad example of how you could write a “looking forward” ending for the musical theater “firefighter” essay.

Sometimes, holding back your main point can be a good strategy. If your essay recounts several experiences, you could save your main message for the conclusion, only explaining what ties all the stories together at the very end.

When done well, this ending leaves the reader thinking about the main point you want them to take from your essay. It’s also a memorable structure that can stand out.

However, if you choose this approach, it can be challenging to keep the essay interesting enough that the reader pays attention throughout.

In the essay outlined below, a student gives us snapshots of her experience of gymnastics at different stages in her life. In the conclusion, she ties the stories together and shares the insight that they taught her about different aspects of her character and values.

• Passionate, excited
• Sister born that day—began to consider people beyond myself
• Realizing that no matter how much I love gymnastics, there are more important things
• I’d been working especially hard to qualify for that level
• It came after many setbacks and failures
• I had to give up time with friends, first homecoming dance of high school, and other activities, and I considered quitting
• Conclusion: I’m still all of those selves: the passionate 7-year-old, the caring 11-year-old, and the determined 15-year-old. Gymnastics has been a constant throughout my life, but beyond the balance beam, it has also shown me how to change and grow.

Ending on an action can be a strong way to wrap up your essay. That might mean including a literal action, dialogue, or continuation of the story.

These endings leave the reader wanting more rather than wishing the essay had ended sooner. They’re interesting and can help you avoid boring your reader.

Here’s an example of how this ending could work for the gymnastics essay.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

• Writing process
• Transition words
• Passive voice
• Paraphrasing

 Communication

• How to end an email
• Ms, mrs, miss
• How to start an email
• I hope this email finds you well
• Hope you are doing well

 Parts of speech

• Personal pronouns
• Conjunctions

There are a few strategies you can use for a memorable ending to your college essay :

• Return to the beginning with a “full circle” structure
• Reveal the main point or insight in your story
• Look to the future
• End on an action

The best technique will depend on your topic choice, essay outline, and writing style. You can write several endings using different techniques to see which works best.

Unlike a five-paragraph essay, your admissions essay should not end by summarizing the points you’ve already made. It’s better to be creative and aim for a strong final impression.

You should also avoid stating the obvious (for example, saying that you hope to be accepted).

There are no set rules for how to structure a college application essay , but these are two common structures that work:

• A montage structure, a series of vignettes with a common theme.
• A narrative structure, a single story that shows your personal growth or how you overcame a challenge.

Avoid the five-paragraph essay structure that you learned in high school.

When revising your college essay , first check for big-picture issues regarding message, flow, tone, style , and clarity. Then, focus on eliminating grammar and punctuation errors.

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Testa, M. (2023, May 31). How to End a College Admissions Essay | 4 Winning Strategies. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/college-essay/conclusion-college-essay/

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Gordon-Conwell Writing Center

• Understanding Writing Expectations
• Brainstorming and Writer's Block
• Outlining for Successful Writing
• Writing a Strong Introduction
• Creating a Clear Thesis Statement
• Developing Body Paragraphs
• Connecting Ideas with Transitions
• Choosing the Best Sources
• Using Sources Effectively
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Paraphrasing without Plagiarizing
• Addressing Counterarguments

Ending with a Strong Conclusion

• Using Words Wisely
• Punctuating Correctly
• Revising, Editing, & Proofreading
• Applying Feedback
• Formatting Correctly
• Recorded Writing Workshops
• Return to GCTS Library Home Page

Just as we say good-bye to people when ending a conversation, so must a writer conclude his/her written text. A writer should imagine that readers have read the text but have not fully grasped all the ideas. Furthermore, the writer must assume that readers do not necessarily know how to respond to the topic. Therefore, it is a writer’s job to remind readers about his/her main claim and key ideas as well as call readers to action. Failing to do so might mean that readers are left with questions about a text and/or do not respond properly to it.

Summarized Explanation

• Most multi-paragraph texts require a concluding paragraph. A basic concluding paragraph should include three main parts (restated thesis, summarized key ideas, clincher).

Detailed Explanation

The following examples are the same ones that appears in the writing guide for Writing a Strong Introduction . 

Color-coding key:

• Restated Thesis
• Summarized Key Ideas

Example #1           

          (Introduction)  Meeting someone for the first time without a proper introduction can be awkward. Likewise, a text without an introductory paragraph leaves a lot to be desired. The introduction is the first thing that readers see in a text. For that reason, it ought to engage and inform readers. To accomplish this, writers should begin texts with an introductory paragraph that includes an effective hook, background information, and thesis statement.

          (Body Paragraphs)

• Why writers should include a hook in an introductory paragraph.
• Why writers should include background information in an introductory paragraph.
• Why writers should include a thesis statement in an introductory paragraph.

          (Concluding Paragraph) In conclusion, a thorough three-part introductory paragraph will ensure a strong start to any text. The first element of an introduction, the hook, works to intrigue readers. Then they will be ready to read more of the background information on a topic. And to top things off, the thesis statement indicates the purpose and focus of a text so that readers know what to expect. Therefore, the importance of an introductory paragraph should not be underestimated, and all writers should seek to create truly engaging introductions.

          (Introduction) They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. This adage is true, but not everything is relative. For example, in the world of writing, texts can take many forms, and writers have a lot of creative freedom. That said, there are some basic frameworks that should be employed for most writing forms—for example, the tried-and-true template for an introductory paragraph. Considering this, the previous introductory paragraph is quite effective because it includes a strong hook, background information, and thesis statement.

• Why the previous introductory paragraph includes a strong hook.
• Why the previous introductory paragraph includes strong background information.
• Why the previous introductory paragraph includes a strong thesis statement.

          (Concluding Paragraphs) To sum up, the sample text is a great example of a strong introductory paragraph. As noted previously, its hook is creative and compels readers to keep going. Afterward, they are met with relevant background information followed by a thesis statement that effectively forecasts the writer's position and key ideas. All in all, this introductory paragraph should be saved and referenced frequently for any writer who wants to create successful introductions.

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Author Interviews

Franny choi's latest poetry finds hope for the future in our past apocalypses.

Julie Depenbrock

"The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On" is Franny Choi's third poetry collection. Francesca B. Marie/HarperCollins hide caption

"The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On" is Franny Choi's third poetry collection.

Poet Franny Choi believes that, for marginalized people, the apocalypse already happened. And, in her latest poetry collection, she explores what it means to live in this unending dystopia.

"By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended and another ending world spun in its place," Choi writes in "The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On."

To read poetry like a poet, don't worry about 'getting it'

In a conversation with Morning Edition 's Leila Fadel, Choi talks about finding comfort in these apocalyptic times — and how the end of the world is sometimes just the end of the world, as we know it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

On surviving the end of the world

Poet Franny Choi Reads From Her New Book 'Soft Science'

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My partner's Black and I'm Korean. And in in both of our our family lineages are are these enormous calamities in which our ancestors survived what seemed utterly unsurvivable. What is more dystopian than the transatlantic slave trade? What is more dystopian than the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which effectively ended Japanese colonial rule? And so remembering that the apocalypse, the world-ending calamities that seem always on the horizon, are those things that we had to survive in order to even get here.

Maybe it's a little morbid that that was comforting to me. ... I remember reading an essay by the writer Rebecca Solnit, who said it's actually easy to imagine the end of the world. What's hard is imagining that a world might actually go on after that terrible, unsurvivable thing, that some version of the world might continue. And so I've never been one to turn down the hard homework. So I said, okay, I will try. I will do my best.

Anthology Of Native Nations Poetry Is A 'Doorway,' Says Editor Joy Harjo

On finding strength in the perseverance of others

To know that my being here is dependent on someone having made a life out of an impossible situation makes me feel like I too can survive the things that are thrown at me. But also, this is just part of what it means to be alive.

On the comfort of "not knowing"

I think that so often what we think of as the end of the world is actually just an end of a world that we know — something that closes and then makes room for the next thing, which might be more terrible or less terrible. But I think that what I find comfort in is the not knowing.

Code Switch

When poets decide who counts.

On the significance of ending her collection with "Protest Poem"

That's the poem that I wrote while sitting in my apartment and at the time in Northampton, Mass. This was 2020. We were locked in our apartment. It was the summer, and George Floyd had had been murdered maybe a few weeks before, and the protests in our city were kind of like, rocking the house.

The walls were shaking from the noise outside, and it was a physical experience to be in that moment of intense protest. And that was what I felt like. I couldn't even exactly hear the words of the chants that were being shouted. I could just feel the walls shaking here, the cheer that that followed each time a chant was repeated, and then feel the emotions of my body, every one of which were saying, "something must be done." Something has to change so that this grief and this rage have to go somewhere. And that was enough.

The collection of poems published this week. HarperCollins hide caption

The collection of poems published this week.

Just the sounds and the feelings were enough. Which is, I think, both beautiful and a little troubling, as somebody whose work is words — you know, that the words in some ways don't even really matter.

And so I think that I was ending the collection saying, okay, like all of this, all of these words, this is what I've been able to do. And then, if you're going to take something from it, maybe it would be wonderful if you took some of the language. It would be wonderful if you took some of the ideas. But if there's one thing you take away, I hope that it's this feeling of of going through grief and rage and then getting to experience, for the span of of one book, what something better might feel like.

This interview was conducted by Leila Fadel, produced by Julie Depenbrock and edited by Reena Advani.

Poetry excerpt

The World Keeps Ending, and The World Goes On

Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats:

boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses

bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse

of the bombed mosque. There was the apocalypse of the taxi driver warped

by flame. There was the apocalypse of the leaving, and the having left—

of my mother unsticking herself from her mother's grave as the plane

barreled down the runway. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse

of planes. There was the apocalypse of pipelines legislating their way

through sacred water, and the apocalypse of the dogs. Before which was

the apocalypse of the dogs and the hoses. Before which, the apocalypse

of dogs and slave catchers whose faces glowed by lantern-light.

Before the apocalypse, the apocalypse of bees. The apocalypse of buses.

Border fence apocalypse. Coat hanger apocalypse. Apocalypse in

the textbooks' selective silences. There was the apocalypse of the settlement

and the soda machine; the apocalypse of the settlement and

the jars of scalps; there was the bedlam of the cannery; the radioactive rain;

the chairless martyr demanding a name. I was born from an apocalypse

and have come to tell you what I know—which is that the apocalypse began

when Columbus praised God and lowered his anchor. It began when a continent

was drawn into cutlets. It began when Kublai Khan told Marco, Begin

at the beginning. By the time the apocalypse began, the world had already

ended. It ended every day for a century or two. It ended, and another ending

world spun in its place. It ended, and we woke up and ordered Greek coffees,

drew the hot liquid through our teeth, as everywhere, the apocalypse rumbled,

the apocalypse remembered, our dear, beloved apocalypse—it drifted

slowly from the trees all around us, so loud we stopped hearing it.

39 Different Ways to Say ‘In Conclusion’ in an Essay (Rated)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Learn about our Editorial Process

The phrase “In conclusion …” sounds reductive, simple and … well, just basic.

You can find better words to conclude an essay than that!

So below I’ve outlined a list of different ways to say in conclusion in an essay using a range of analysis verbs . Each one comes with an explanation of the best time to use each phrase and an example you could consider.

Read Also: How to Write a Conclusion using the 5C’s Method

List of Ways to Say ‘In Conclusion’ in an Essay

The following are the best tips I have for to say in conclusion in an essay.

1. The Weight of the Evidence Suggests…

My Rating: 10/10

Overview: This is a good concluding phrase for an evaluative essay where you need to compare two different positions on a topic then conclude by saying which one has more evidence behind it than the other.

You could also use this phrase for argumentative essays where you’ve put forward all the evidence for your particular case.

Example: “The weight of the evidence suggests that climate change is a real phenomenon.”

2. A Thoughtful Analysis would Conclude…

My Rating: 9/10

Overview: I would use this phrase in either an argumentative essay or a comparison essay. As an argument, it highlights that you think your position is the most logical.

In a comparison essay, it shows that you have (or have intended to) thoughtfully explore the issue by looking at both sides.

Example: “A thoughtful analysis would conclude that there is substantial evidence highlighting that climate change is real.”

Related Article: 17+ Great Ideas For An Essay About Yourself

3. A Balanced Assessment of the Above Information…

Overview: This phrase can be used to show that you have made a thoughtful analysis of the information you found when researching the essay. You’re telling your teacher with this phrase that you have looked at all sides of the argument before coming to your conclusion.

Example: “A balanced assessment of the above information would be that climate change exists and will have a strong impact on the world for centuries to come.”

4. Across the Board…

My Rating: 5/10

Overview: I would use this phrase in a less formal context such as in a creative discussion but would leave it out of a formal third-person essay. To me, the phrase comes across as too colloquial.

Example: “Across the board, there are scientists around the world who consistently provide evidence for human-induced climate change.”

5. Logically…

My Rating: 7/10

Overview: This phrase can be used at the beginning of any paragraph that states out a series of facts that will be backed by clear step-by-step explanations that the reader should be able to follow to a conclusion.

Example: “Logically, the rise of the automobile would speed up economic expansion in the United States. Automobiles allowed goods to flow faster around the economy.

6. After all is Said and Done…

Overview: This is a colloquial term that is more useful in a speech than written text. If you feel that the phrase ‘In conclusion,’ is too basic, then I’d also avoid this term. However, use in speech is common, so if you’re giving a speech, it may be more acceptable.

Example: “After all is said and done, it’s clear that there is more evidence to suggest that climate change is real than a hoax.”

7. All in All…

Overview: ‘All in all’ is a colloquial term that I would use in speech but not in formal academic writing. Colloquialisms can show that you have poor command of the English language. However, I would consider using this phrase in the conclusion of a debate.

Example: “All in all, our debate team has shown that there is insurmountable evidence that our side of the argument is correct.”

8. All Things Considered…

My Rating: 6/10

Overview: This term is a good way of saying ‘I have considered everything above and now my conclusion is..’ However, it is another term that’s more commonly used in speech than writing. Use it in a high school debate, but when it comes to a formal essay, I would leave it out.

Example: “All things considered, there’s no doubt in my mind that climate change is man-made.”

9. As a Final Note…

My Rating: 3/10

Overview: This phrase gives me the impression that the student doesn’t understand the point of a conclusion. It’s not to simply make a ‘final note’, but to summarize and reiterate. So, I would personally avoid this one.

Example: “As a final note, I would say that I do think the automobile was one of the greatest inventions of the 20 th Century.”

10. As Already Stated…

My Rating: 2/10

Overview: I don’t like this phrase. It gives teachers the impression that you’re going around in circles and haven’t organized your essay properly. I would particularly avoid it in the body of an essay because I always think: “If you already stated it, why are you stating it again?” Of course, the conclusion does re-state things, but it also adds value because it also summarizes them. So, add value by using a phrase such as ‘summarizing’ or ‘weighing up’ in your conclusion instead.

Example: “As already stated, I’m going to repeat myself and annoy my teacher.”

11. At present, the Best Evidence Suggests…

My Rating: 8/10

Overview: In essays where the evidence may change in the future. Most fields of study do involve some evolution over time, so this phrase acknowledges that “right now” the best evidence is one thing, but it may change in the future. It also shows that you’ve looked at the latest information on the topic.

Example: “At present, the best evidence suggests that carbon dioxide emissions from power plants is the greatest influence on climate change.”

12. At the Core of the Issue…

Overview: I personally find this phrase to be useful for most essays. It highlights that you are able to identify the most important or central point from everything you have examined. It is slightly less formal than some other phrases on this list, but I also wouldn’t consider it too colloquial for an undergraduate essay.

Example: “At the core of the issue in this essay is the fact scientists have been unable to convince the broader public of the importance of action on climate change.”

13. Despite the shortcomings of…

Overview: This phrase can be useful in an argumentative essay. It shows that there are some limitations to your argument, but , on balance you still think your position is the best. This will allow you to show critical insight and knowledge while coming to your conclusion.

Often, my students make the mistake of thinking they can only take one side in an argumentative essay. On the contrary, you should be able to highlight the limitations of your point-of-view while also stating that it’s the best.

Example: “Despite the shortcomings of globalization, this essay has found that on balance it has been good for many areas in both the developed and developing world.”

14. Finally…

My Rating: 4/10

Overview: While the phrase ‘Finally,’ does indicate that you’re coming to the end of your discussion, it is usually used at the end of a list of ideas rather than in a conclusion. It also implies that you’re adding a point rather that summing up previous points you have made.

Example: “Finally, this essay has highlighted the importance of communication between policy makers and practitioners in order to ensure good policy is put into effect.”

15. Gathering the above points together…

Overview: While this is not a phrase I personally use very often, I do believe it has the effect of indicating that you are “summing up”, which is what you want out of a conclusion.

Example: “Gathering the above points together, it is clear that the weight of evidence highlights the importance of action on climate change.”

16. Given the above information…

Overview: This phrase shows that you are considering the information in the body of the piece when coming to your conclusion. Therefore, I believe it is appropriate for starting a conclusion.

Example: “Given the above information, it is reasonable to conclude that the World Health Organization is an appropriate vehicle for achieving improved health outcomes in the developing world.”

17. In a nutshell…

Overview: This phrase means to say everything in the fewest possible words. However, it is a colloquial phrase that is best used in speech rather than formal academic writing.

Example: “In a nutshell, there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate about socialism vs capitalism.”

18. In closing…

Overview: This phrase is an appropriate synonym for ‘In conclusion’ and I would be perfectly fine with a student using this phrase in their essay. Make sure you follow-up by explaining your position based upon the weight of evidence presented in the body of your piece

Example: “In closing, there is ample evidence to suggest that liberalism has been the greatest force for progress in the past 100 years.”

19. In essence…

Overview: While the phrase ‘In essence’ does suggest you are about to sum up the core findings of your discussion, it is somewhat colloquial and is best left for speech rather than formal academic writing.

Example: “In essence, this essay has shown that cattle farming is an industry that should be protected as an essential service for our country.”

20. In review…

Overview: We usually review someone else’s work, not our own. For example, you could review a book that you read or a film you watched. So, writing “In review” as a replacement for “In conclusion” comes across a little awkward.

Example: “In review, the above information has made a compelling case for compulsory military service in the United States.”

21. In short…

Overview: Personally, I find that this phrase is used more regularly by undergraduate student. As students get more confident with their writing, they tend to use higher-rated phrases from this list. Nevertheless, I would not take grades away from a student for using this phrase.

Example: “In short, this essay has shown the importance of sustainable agriculture for securing a healthy future for our nation.”

22. In Sum…

Overview: Short for “In summary”, the phrase “In sum” sufficiently shows that you are not coming to the moment where you will sum up the essay. It is an appropriate phrase to use instead of “In conclusion”.

But remember to not just summarize but also discuss the implications of your findings in your conclusion.

Example: “In sum, this essay has shown the importance of managers in ensuring efficient operation of medium-to-large enterprises.”

23. In Summary…

Overview: In summary and in sum are the same terms which can be supplemented for “In conclusion”. You will show that you are about to summarize the points you said in the body of the essay, which is what you want from an essay.

Example: “In summary, reflection is a very important metacognitive skill that all teachers need to master in order to improve their pedagogical skills.”

24. It cannot be conclusively stated that…

Overview: While this phrase is not always be a good fit for your essay, when it is, it does show knowledge and skill in writing. You would use this phrase if you are writing an expository essay where you have decided that there is not enough evidence currently to make a firm conclusion on the issue.

Example: “It cannot be conclusively stated that the Big Bang was when the universe began. However, it is the best theory so far, and none of the other theories explored in this essay have as much evidence behind them.”

25. It is apparent that…

Overview: The term ‘ apparent ’ means that something is ‘clear’ or even ‘obvious’. So, you would use this word in an argumentative essay where you think you have put forward a very compelling argument.

Example: “It is apparent that current migration patterns in the Americas are unsustainable and causing significant harm to the most vulnerable people in our society.”

26. Last but not least…

Overview: The phrase “last but not least” is a colloquial idiom that is best used in speech rather than formal academic writing. Furthermore, when you are saying ‘last’, you mean to say you’re making your last point rather than summing up all your points you already made. So, I’d avoid this one.

Example: “Last but not least, this essay has highlighted the importance of empowering patients to exercise choice over their own medical decisions.”

27. Overall…

My Rating: 7.5/10

Overview: This phrase means ‘taking everything into account’, which sounds a lot like what you would want to do in an essay. I don’t consider it to be a top-tier choice (which is why I rated it 7), but in my opinion it is perfectly acceptable to use in an undergraduate essay.

Example: “Overall, religious liberty continues to be threatened across the world, and faces significant threats in the 21 st Century.”

28. The above points illustrate…

Overview: This phrase is a good start to a conclusion paragraph that talks about the implications of the points you made in your essay. Follow it up with a statement that defends your thesis you are putting forward in the essay.

Example: “The above points illustrate that art has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on humanity since the renaissance.”

29. The evidence presented in this essay suggests that…

Overview: I like this phrase because it highlights that you are about to gather together the evidence from the body of the essay to put forward a final thesis statement .

Example: “The evidence presented in this essay suggests that the democratic system of government is the best for securing maximum individual liberty for citizens of a nation.”

30. This essay began by stating…

Overview: This phrase is one that I teach in my YouTube mini-course as an effective one to use in an essay conclusion. If you presented an interesting fact in your introduction , you can return to that point from the beginning of the essay to provide nice symmetry in your writing.

Example: “This essay began by stating that corruption has been growing in the Western world. However, the facts collected in the body of the essay show that institutional checks and balances can sufficiently minimize this corruption in the long-term.”

31. This essay has argued…

Overview: This term can be used effectively in an argumentative essay to provide a summary of your key points. Follow it up with an outline of all your key points, and then a sentence about the implications of the points you made. See the example below.

Example: “This essay has argued that standardized tests are damaging for students’ mental health. Tests like the SATs should therefore be replaced by project-based testing in schools.”

32. To close…

Overview: This is a very literal way of saying “In conclusion”. While it’s suitable and serves its purpose, it does come across as being a sophomoric term. Consider using one of the higher-rated phrases in this list.

Example: “To close, this essay has highlighted both the pros and cons of relational dialectics theory and argued that it is not the best communication theory for the 21 st Century.”

33. To Conclude…

Overview: Like ‘to close’ and ‘in summary’, the phrase ‘to conclude’ is very similar to ‘in conclusion’. It can therefore be used as a sufficient replacement for that term. However, as with the above terms, it’s just okay and you could probably find a better phrase to use.

Example: “To conclude, this essay has highlighted that there are multiple models of communication but there is no one perfect theory to explain each situation.”

34. To make a long story short…

My Rating: 1/10

Overview: This is not a good phrase to use in an academic essay. It is a colloquialism. It also implies that you have been rambling in your writing and you could have said everything more efficiently. I would personally not use this phrase.

Example: “To make a long story short, I don’t have very good command of academic language.”

35. To Sum up…

Overview: This phrase is the same as ‘In summary’. It shows that you have made all of your points and now you’re about to bring them all together in a ‘summary’. Just remember in your conclusion that you need to do more than summarize but also talk about the implications of your findings. So you’ll need to go beyond just a summary.

Example: “In summary, there is ample evidence that linear models of communication like Lasswell’s model are not as good at explaining 21 st Century communication as circular models like the Osgood-Schramm model .”

36. Ultimately…

Overview: While this phrase does say that you are coming to a final point – also known as a conclusion – it’s also a very strong statement that might not be best to use in all situations. I usually accept this phrase from my undergraduates, but for my postgraduates I’d probably suggest simply removing it.

Example: “Ultimately, new media has been bad for the world because it has led to the spread of mistruths around the internet.”

37. Undoubtedly…

Overview: If you are using it in a debate or argumentative essay, it can be helpful. However, in a regular academic essay, I would avoid it. We call this a ‘booster’, which is a term that emphasizes certainty. Unfortunately, certainty is a difficult thing to claim, so you’re better off ‘hedging’ with phrases like ‘It appears’ or ‘The best evidence suggests’.

Example: “Undoubtedly, I know everything about this topic and am one hundred percent certain even though I’m just an undergraduate student.”

38. Weighing up the facts, this essay finds…

Overview: This statement highlights that you are looking at all of the facts both for and against your points of view. It shows you’re not just blindly following one argument but being careful about seeing things from many perspectives.

Example: “Weighing up the facts, this essay finds that reading books is important for developing critical thinking skills in childhood.”

39. With that said…

Overview: This is another phrase that I would avoid. This is a colloquialism that’s best used in speech rather than writing. It is another term that feels sophomoric and is best to avoid. Instead, use a more formal term such as: ‘Weighing up the above points, this essay finds…’

Example: “With that said, this essay disagrees with the statement that you need to go to college to get a good job.”

Do you Need to Say Anything?

Something I often tell my students is: “Can you just remove that phrase?”

Consider this sentence:

• “In conclusion, the majority of scientists concur that climate change exists.”

Would it be possible to simply say:

• “ In conclusion, The majority of scientists concur that climate change exists.”

So, I’d recommend also just considering removing that phrase altogether! Sometimes the best writing is the shortest, simplest writing that gets to the point without any redundant language at all.

How to Write an Effective Conclusion

Before I go, I’d like to bring your attention to my video on ‘how to write an effective conclusion’. I think it would really help you out given that you’re looking for help on how to write a conclusion. It’s under 5 minutes long and has helped literally thousands of students write better conclusions for their essays:

You can also check out these conclusion examples for some copy-and-paste conclusions for your own essay.

In Conclusion…

Well, I had to begin this conclusion with ‘In conclusion…’ I liked the irony in it, and I couldn’t pass up that chance.

Overall, don’t forget that concluding an essay is a way to powerfully summarize what you’ve had to say and leave the reader with a strong impression that you’ve become an authority on the topic you’re researching. 

So, whether you write it as a conclusion, summary, or any other synonym for conclusion, those other ways to say in conclusion are less important than making sure that the message in your conclusion is incredibly strong.

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Green Flags in a Relationship
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Signs you're Burnt Out, Not Lazy
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Toxic Things Parents Say to their Children

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Essay Conclusions

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Learn about the elements of a successful essay conclusion.

The conclusion is a very important part of your essay. Although it is sometimes treated as a roundup of all of the bits that didn’t fit into the paper earlier, it deserves better treatment than that! It's the last thing the reader will see, so it tends to stick in the reader's memory. It's also a great place to remind the reader exactly why your topic is important. A conclusion is more than just "the last paragraph"—it's a working part of the paper. This is the place to push your reader to think about the consequences of your topic for the wider world or for the reader's own life!

A good conclusion should do a few things:

Restate your thesis

Synthesize or summarize your major points

Make the context of your argument clear

Restating Your Thesis

You've already spent time and energy crafting a solid thesis statement for your introduction, and if you've done your job right, your whole paper focuses on that thesis statement. That's why it's so important to address the thesis in your conclusion! Many writers choose to begin the conclusion by restating the thesis, but you can put your thesis into the conclusion anywhere—the first sentence of the paragraph, the last sentence, or in between. Here are a few tips for rephrasing your thesis:

Remind the reader that you've proven this thesis over the course of your paper. For example, if you're arguing that your readers should get their pets from animal shelters rather than pet stores, you might say, "If you were considering that puppy in the pet-shop window, remember that your purchase will support 'puppy mills' instead of rescuing a needy dog, and consider selecting your new friend at your local animal shelter." This example gives the reader not only the thesis of the paper, but a reminder of the most powerful point in the argument!

Revise the thesis statement so that it reflects the relationship you've developed with the reader during the paper. For example, if you've written a paper that targets parents of young children, you can find a way to phrase your thesis to capitalize on that—maybe by beginning your thesis statement with, "As a parent of a young child…"

Don’t repeat your thesis word for word—make sure that your new statement is an independent, fresh sentence!

Summary or Synthesis

This section of the conclusion might come before the thesis statement or after it. Your conclusion should remind the reader of what your paper actually says! The best conclusion will include a synthesis, not just a summary—instead of a mere list of your major points, the best conclusion will draw those points together and relate them to one another so that your reader can apply the information given in the essay. Here are a couple of ways to do that:

Give a list of the major arguments for your thesis (usually, these are the topic sentences of the parts of your essay).

Explain how these parts are connected. For example, in the animal-shelter essay, you might point out that adopting a shelter dog helps more animals because your adoption fee supports the shelter, which makes your choice more socially responsible.

One of the most important functions of the conclusion is to provide context for your argument. Your reader may finish your essay without a problem and understand your argument without understanding why that argument is important. Your introduction might point out the reason your topic matters, but your conclusion should also tackle this questions. Here are some strategies for making your reader see why the topic is important:

Tell the reader what you want him or her to do. Is your essay a call to action? If so, remind the reader of what he/she should do. If not, remember that asking the reader to think a certain way is an action in itself. (In the above examples, the essay asks the reader to adopt a shelter dog—a specific action.)

Explain why this topic is timely or important. For example, the animal-shelter essay might end with a statistic about the number of pets in shelters waiting for adoption.

Remind the readers of why the topic matters to them personally. For example, it doesn’t matter much if you believe in the mission of animal shelters, if you're not planning to get a dog; however, once you're looking for a dog, it is much more important. The conclusion of this essay might say, "Since you’re in the market for a dog, you have a major decision to make: where to get one." This will remind the reader that the argument is personally important!

Conclusion paragraphs

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As a Teenager in Europe, I Went to Nudist Beaches All the Time. 30 Years Later, Would the Experience Be the Same?

In July 2017, I wrote an article about toplessness for Vogue Italia. The director, actor, and political activist Lina Esco had emerged from the world of show business to question public nudity laws in the United States with 2014’s Free the Nipple . Her film took on a life of its own and, thanks to the endorsement from the likes of Miley Cyrus, Cara Delevingne, and Willow Smith, eventually developed into a whole political movement, particularly on social media where the hashtag #FreeTheNipple spread at lightning speed. The same year as that piece, actor Alyssa Milano tweeted “me too” and encouraged others who had been sexually assaulted to do the same, building on the movement activist Tarana Burke had created more than a decade earlier. The rest is history.

In that Vogue article, I chatted with designer Alessandro Michele about a shared memory of our favorite topless beaches of our youth. Anywhere in Italy where water appeared—be it the hard-partying Riviera Romagnola, the traditionally chic Amalfi coast and Sorrento peninsula, the vertiginous cliffs and inlets of Italy’s continuation of the French Côte d’Azur or the towering volcanic rocks of Sicily’s mythological Riviera dei Ciclopi—one was bound to find bodies of all shapes and forms, naturally topless.

In the ’90s, growing up in Italy, naked breasts were everywhere and nobody thought anything about it. “When we look at our childhood photos we recognize those imperfect breasts and those bodies, each with their own story. I think of the ‘un-beauty’ of that time and feel it is actually the ultimate beauty,” Michele told me.

Indeed, I felt the same way. My relationship with toplessness was part of a very democratic cultural status quo. If every woman on the beaches of the Mediterranean—from the sexy girls tanning on the shoreline to the grandmothers eating spaghetti al pomodoro out of Tupperware containers under sun umbrellas—bore equally naked body parts, then somehow we were all on the same team. No hierarchies were established. In general, there was very little naked breast censorship. Free nipples appeared on magazine covers at newsstands, whether tabloids or art and fashion magazines. Breasts were so naturally part of the national conversation and aesthetic that Ilona Staller (also known as Cicciolina) and Moana Pozzi, two porn stars, cofounded a political party called the Love Party. I have a clear memory of my neighbor hanging their party’s banner out his window, featuring a topless Cicciolina winking.

A lot has changed since those days, but also since that initial 2017 piece. There’s been a feminist revolution, a transformation of women’s fashion and gender politics, the absurd overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction in New York, the intensely disturbing overturning of Roe v Wade and the current political battle over reproductive rights radiating from America and far beyond. One way or another, the female body is very much the site of political battles as much as it is of style and fashion tastes. And maybe for this reason naked breasts seem to populate runways and street style a lot more than they do beaches—it’s likely that being naked at a dinner party leaves more of a permanent mark than being naked on a glamorous shore. Naked “dressing” seems to be much more popular than naked “being.” It’s no coincidence that this year Saint Laurent, Chloé, Ferragamo, Tom Ford, Gucci, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and Valentino all paid homage to sheer dressing in their collections, with lacy dresses, see-through tops, sheer silk hosiery fabric, and close-fitting silk dresses. The majority of Anthony Vaccarello’s fall 2024 collection was mostly transparent. And even off the runway, guests at the Saint Laurent show matched the mood. Olivia Wilde appeared in a stunning see-through dark bodysuit, Georgia May Jagger wore a sheer black halter top, Ebony Riley wore a breathtaking V-neck, and Elsa Hosk went for translucent polka dots.

In some strange way, it feels as if the trends of the ’90s have swapped seats with those of today. When, in 1993, a 19-year-old Kate Moss wore her (now iconic) transparent, bronze-hued Liza Bruce lamé slip dress to Elite Model Agency’s Look of the Year Awards in London, I remember seeing her picture everywhere and feeling in awe of her daring and grace. I loved her simple sexy style, with her otherworldly smile, the hair tied back in a bun. That very slip has remained in the collective unconscious for decades, populating thousands of internet pages, but in remembering that night Moss admitted that the nude look was totally unintentional: “I had no idea why everyone was so excited—in the darkness of Corinne [Day’s] Soho flat, the dress was not see-through!” That’s to say that nude dressing was usually mostly casual and not intellectualized in the context of a larger movement.

But today nudity feels loaded in different ways. In April, actor and author Julia Fox appeared in Los Angeles in a flesh-colored bra that featured hairy hyper-realist prints of breasts and nipples, and matching panties with a print of a sewn-up vagina and the words “closed” on it, as a form of feminist performance art. Breasts , an exhibition curated by Carolina Pasti, recently opened as part of the 60th Venice Biennale at Palazzo Franchetti and showcases works that span from painting and sculpture to photography and film, reflecting on themes of motherhood, empowerment, sexuality, body image, and illness. The show features work by Cindy Sherman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Louise Bourgeois, and an incredible painting by Bernardino Del Signoraccio of Madonna dell’Umiltà, circa 1460-1540. “It was fundamental for me to include a Madonna Lactans from a historical perspective. In this intimate representation, the Virgin reveals one breast while nurturing the child, the organic gesture emphasizing the profound bond between mother and child,” Pasti said when we spoke.

Through her portrayal of breasts, she delves into the delicate balance of strength and vulnerability within the female form. I spoke to Pasti about my recent musings on naked breasts, which she shared in a deep way. I asked her whether she too noticed a disparity between nudity on beaches as opposed to the one on streets and runways, and she agreed. Her main concern today is around censorship. To Pasti, social media is still far too rigid around breast exposure and she plans to discuss this issue through a podcast that she will be launching in September, together with other topics such as motherhood, breastfeeding, sexuality, and breast cancer awareness.

With summer at the door, it was my turn to see just how much of the new reread on transparency would apply to beach life. In the last few years, I noticed those beaches Michele and I reminisced about have grown more conservative and, despite being the daughter of unrepentant nudists and having a long track record of militant topless bathing, I myself have felt a bit more shy lately. Perhaps a woman in her 40s with two children is simply less prone to taking her top off, but my memories of youth are populated by visions of bare-chested mothers surveilling the coasts and shouting after their kids in the water. So when did we stop? And why? When did Michele’s era of “un-beauty” end?

In order to get back in touch with my own naked breasts I decided to revisit the nudist beaches of my youth to see what had changed. On a warm day in May, I researched some local topless beaches around Rome and asked a friend to come with me. Two moms, plus our four children, two girls and two boys of the same ages. “Let’s make an experiment of this and see what happens,” I proposed.

The kids all yawned, but my friend was up for it. These days to go topless, especially on urban beaches, you must visit properties that have an unspoken nudist tradition. One of these in Rome is the natural reserve beach at Capocotta, south of Ostia, but I felt a bit unsure revisiting those sands. In my memory, the Roman nudist beaches often equated to encounters with promiscuous strangers behind the dunes. I didn’t want to expose the kids, so, being that I am now a wise adult, I went ahead and picked a compromise. I found a nude-friendly beach on the banks of the Farfa River, in the rolling Sabina hills.

We piled into my friend’s car and drove out. The kids were all whining about the experiment. “We don’t want to see naked mums!” they complained. “Can’t you just lie and say you went to a nudist beach?”

We parked the car and walked across the medieval fairy-tale woods until we reached the path that ran along the river. All around us were huge trees and gigantic leaves. It had rained a lot recently and the vegetation had grown incredibly. We walked past the remains of a Roman road. The colors all around were bright green, the sky almost fluorescent blue. The kids got sidetracked by the presence of frogs. According to the indications, the beach was about a mile up the river. Halfway down the path, we bumped into a couple of young guys in fanny packs. I scanned them for signs of quintessential nudist attitude, but realized I actually had no idea what that was. I asked if we were headed in the right direction to go to “the beach”. They nodded and gave us a sly smile, which I immediately interpreted as a judgment about us as mothers, and more generally about our age, but I was ready to vindicate bare breasts against ageism.

We reached a small pebbled beach, secluded and bordered by a huge trunk that separated it from the path. A group of girls was there, sharing headphones and listening to music. To my dismay they were all wearing the tops and bottoms of their bikinis. One of them was in a full-piece bathing suit and shorts. “See, they are all wearing bathing suits. Please don’t be the weird mums who don’t.”

At this point, it was a matter of principle. My friend and I decided to take our bathing suits off completely, if only for a moment, and jumped into the river. The boys stayed on the beach with full clothes and shoes on, horrified. The girls went in behind us with their bathing suits. “Are you happy now? my son asked. “Did you prove your point?”

I didn’t really know what my point actually was. I think a part of me wanted to feel entitled to those long-gone decades of naturalism. Whether this was an instinct, or as Pasti said, “an act that was simply tied to the individual freedom of each woman”, it was hard to tell. At this point in history, the two things didn’t seem to cancel each other out—in fact, the opposite. Taking off a bathing suit, at least for my generation who never had to fight for it, had unexpectedly turned into a radical move and maybe I wanted to be part of the new discourse. Also, the chances of me going out in a fully sheer top were slim these days, but on the beach it was different. I would always fight for an authentic topless experience.

After our picnic on the river, we left determined to make our way—and without children—to the beaches of Capocotta. In truth, no part of me actually felt very subversive doing something I had been doing my whole life, but it still felt good. Once a free breast, always a free breast.

This article was originally published on British Vogue .

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There Are Many Ways The World Could End, But Scientists Think These Are The Most Likely

Our atmosphere, proximity to the Sun, and countless other beautiful coincidences not only permit living things to survive and evolve but also thrive. 

And yet, here we are, sitting at desks and in coffee shops and walking down the street like it isn't some kind of extraordinary miracle.

But all good things must come to  an end . One day Earth will be inhospitable to anything resembling life as we know it.

The life on this planet likely won't cease until billions of years from now.

But, depending on the vicissitudes of astrophysics, it could also happen tomorrow or anytime in between.

Here are the many ways scientists believe Earth could die.

1) Earth's molten core might cool.

Earth is surrounded by a protective magnetic shield, called the magnetosphere.

The field is generated by Earth's rotation, which swirls a thick shell of liquid iron and nickel (the outer core) around a solid ball of metal (the inner core), creating a giant electric dynamo.

The magnetosphere deflects energetic particles that emanate from the Sun, changing its size and shape as it's hit.

The resulting flood of high-energy particles that slam into Earth's air can trigger beautiful auroras, or sometimes disruptive geomagnetic storms .

But if the core cools, we'd lose our magnetosphere - and also our protection from solar winds, which would slowly blast our atmosphere into space.

Mars - once rich with water and a thick atmosphere - suffered this same fate billions of years ago, leading to the nearly airless, seemingly lifeless world we know today.

2) The Sun could start to die and expand.

The Sun - and our position relative to it - is perhaps the most important piece of our tenuous existence.

But the Sun is still a star. And stars die.

Right now, the Sun is midway through life, steadily converting hydrogen into helium through fusion.

That won't last forever, though. Billions of years from now the Sun will run low on hydrogen and start fusing helium.

It's a more energetic reaction and will push the sun's layers outward, and possibly start pulling Earth toward the Sun.

We'd be incinerated and then vaporised.

That, or the Sun's expansion would push Earth out of orbit. It'd die frozen as a rogue planet, untethered to any star and drifting through the void.

3) Earth could get shoved into a deadly orbit.

Speaking of rogue planets, worlds often get kicked out of their solar systems during formation.

According to recent simulations, in fact, rogue planets may outnumber stars in the Milky Way by 100,000 to one.

One of those rogue planets could drift into the Solar System and destabilise Earth into an extreme and inhospitable orbit.

A world that's large enough and drifts close enough could even kick us out of the Solar System entirely. (Or cause us to collide with a nearby planet, like Venus or Mercury .)

As its own rogue planet, Earth would become an ice ball. Meanwhile, a significant gravitational shove could also make extreme and deadly seasons that alternate between blisteringly cold and searingly hot.

4) A rogue planet could hit Earth.

Or instead of just passing by and disrupting Earth's orbit, a drifting world could make a direct hit.

It wouldn't be unprecedented. About 4.5 billion years ago, a small planet crashed into a larger planet in the Solar System - forming Earth and its moon.

A new collision would similarly send debris flying all over the Solar System and melt Earth 100 percent through. And while the new planet would eventually reform and cool down, it's anyone's guess if it'd be habitable.

5) Asteroids could bombard the planet.

Hollywood loves death-by- asteroid .

Rocks from space can be pretty destructive - a big one probably wiped out the dinosaurs - though it would take a lot of asteroids to properly dispatch the entire planet.

Still, it could happen. Earth was heavily bombarded by asteroids for hundreds of millions of years after it formed.

The impacts were so intense that the oceans boiled for a full year.

All life was single-celled at that point, and only the most heat-tolerant microbes made it.

 Today's larger lifeforms almost certainly wouldn't make it. Air temperatures could reach more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius) for several weeks if we suffered a similar pummeling.

6) Earth could pass too close to a wandering black hole .

Black holes might be Hollywood's second-favorite form of planet death. It's easy to see why.

They're as mysterious as they are frightening. Even the name is ominous.

We don't know much about them, but we do know they're so dense that not even light can escape beyond a black hole's event horizon.

And scientists think 'recoiled' black holes are out there wandering through space, just like rogue planets. It's not inconceivable that one could pass through the solar system.

A small black hole might harmlessly pass through Earth, though anything larger than mass of the Moon would cause big problems.

If light can't escape, Earth definitely won't. There are two ideas about what could happen after the point of no return, given a big enough rogue black hole.

Beyond the event horizon, atoms might stretch until they're pulled apart entirely.

Other physicists have theorised we'd run right into the end of the universe, or end up in an entirely different one.

Even if a recoiled black hole misses Earth, it might pass closely enough to cause earthquakes and other devastation, kick us out of the solar system, or spiral us into the sun.

7) Earth's atmosphere could be obliterated in a gamma ray burst.

Gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs, are one of the most powerful phenomena in the Universe.

Most are the result of massive stars collapsing when they die. One short blast can emit more energy than our sun will over the course of its lifetime.

That energy has the potential to eradicate the ozone layer, flood the Earth with dangerous ultraviolet light, and trigger rapid global cooling.

In fact, a GRB pointed at Earth might have caused the first mass extinction 440 million years ago.

Luckily, David Thompson, deputy project director on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, told National Geographic that GRBs aren't really a big concern.

He told the magazine  the risk was equivalent to "the danger I might face if I found a polar bear in my closet in Bowie, Maryland."

This is the thing that could actually end the whole universe, not just the Earth.

The idea: A mysterious force called dark energy is pushing the universe apart at a faster and faster rate.

If this keeps accelerating, as it seems to be doing now, perhaps 22 billion years from now the force that keeps atoms together will fail - and all matter in the universe will dissolve into radiation.

But assuming the "Big Rip" is a dud, who knows what might happen after a global calamity humans don't survive?

It's possible some microbes will survive to reseed more complex life.

But if our destruction is total, we could at least hope some other intelligent life exists out there, and can pay its respects.

A version of this article was first published in November 2016.

This article was originally published by Business Insider .

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Location manager guild awards: ‘oppenheimer’, ‘m-i: dead reckoning’, ‘fallout,’ ‘fargo’ & ‘ripley’ among winners – full list.

• Sarajevo Film Festival 2024 Awards: ‘Three Kilometers To The End Of The World’ Takes Top Prize

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Romanian film Three Kilometers to the End of the World , from director Emanuel Pârvu, won the Heart of Sarajevo prize on Friday for Best Feature Film at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival . The film focuses on the violent attack on a 17-year-old boy and and the aftermath in his home village in the Danube Delta wetlands region in Romania.

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The competition jury included Paul Schrader as president (director/screenwriter, USA); Sebastian Cavazza (actor, Slovenia); Una Gunjak (director/screewriter/editor, Bosina and Herzegovina); Juho Kuosmanen (director/screenwriter, Finland); and Noomi Rapace (actress/producer, Sweden)

The Heart of Sarajevo prize for Best Documentary went to A Picture to Remember from director Olga Chernykh, and Absent , from Cem Demirer, was the top Short Film.

RELATED: Alexander Payne Talks ‘Election’ Sequel & Teases Upcoming Western With ‘The Holdovers’ Scribe David Hemingson — Sarajevo

Here are the winners at the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival:

Awards of the 30th Sarajevo Film Festival

HONORARY HEART OF SARAJEVO Philippe Bober Christof Papousek Alexader Payne Meg Ryan Paul Schrader Elia Suleiman John Turturro HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST FEATURE FILM THREE KILOMETERS TO THE END OF THE WORLD Romania Director: Emanuel Pârvu Producer: Miruna Berecsu The monetary prize in the amount of €16,000 is co-funded by the Tourism Association of Canton Sarajevo. HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DIRECTOR Yorgos Zois, ARCADIA Greece, Bulgria, USA The monetary prize in the amount of €10,000 is sponsored by the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina in cooperation with UNESCO. HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST ACTRESS Anab Ahmed Ibrahim, VILLAGE NEXT TO PARADISE Austria, France, Germany, Somalia Monetary prize in the amount of €2,500. HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST ACTOR Doru Bem, HOLY WEEK Romania, Switzerland Monetary prize in the amount of €2,500.

HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST DOCUMENTARY FILM A PICTURE TO REMEMBER Ukraine, France, Germany Director: Olga Chernykh The monetary prize in the amount of €4,000 is sponsored by the Government of Switzerland. HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM LIKE A SICK YELLOW Kosovo* Director: Norika Sefa Monetary prize in the amount of €2,000. HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD

YOUR LIFE WITHOUT ME Hungary, Switzerland Director: Anna Rubi The Human Rights Award is presented for the best film from the Competition Programme – Documentary Film that addresses human rights issues. The monetary prize in the amount of €3,000 is sponsored by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. SPECIAL JURY AWARD WHAT WE ASK OF A STATUE IS THAT IT DOESN’T MOVE Greece, France Director: Daphné Hérétakis Monetary prize in the amount of €2,500. HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST SHORT FILM ABSENT Türkiye Director: Cem Demirer Qualifies the winning film for consideration for the Academy Award® for Best Short Film. Monetary prize in the amount of €2,500. SPECIAL MENTION TAKO TSUBO Austria, Germany Director: Eva Pedroza, Fanny Sorgo HEART OF SARAJEVO FOR BEST STUDENT FILM THE SMELL OF FRESH PAINT Serbia Director: Nađa Petrović The monetary prize in the amount of €1,000 is sponsored by the Regional Cooperation Council. SPECIAL ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS AWARD THE SKY ABOVE ZENICA Denmark, Bosnia and Herzegovina Director: Zlatko Pranjić, Nanna Frank Møller Award in the amount of €5,000 sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme in BiH. SPECIAL AWARD FOR PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY CENT’ANNI Slovenia, Italy, Poland, Serbia, Austria Director: Maja Doroteja Prelog The monetary prize in the amount of €7,500 is sponsored by Mastercard.

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• Essay on History

Argumentative Essay On The End Of The World

Type of paper: Argumentative Essay

Topic: History , Life , Theory , Tort Law , World , Evidence , Maya , The World

Published: 12/03/2019

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At the turn of the new millennium, there were rumors that technology would collapse and the world would cease to exist in its current form. When this did not happen, a new theory emerged, based on the ancient Mayan calendars that claimed that the world, and life, would end in 2012. This doomsday prediction is based on claims of ancient manuscripts from all over the world. There is, however no scientific evidence that the world will end in 2012, or that the Mayans ever equated such relevance with the date, which is, in fact the last date on their calendar. The year 2012 will not mark the end of the world. Much like the Y2K, the prediction that the world would end at the turn of the new millennium, the 2012 prediction does not hold when juxtaposed with scientific inquiry. The predominant claim is that Nibiru, a planet that was discovered by ancient Sumerians, is headed towards the earth’s orbit and will destroy it and the life within (NASA 1). Proponents of this theory forget to mention that the initial date had been May 2003 but was later pushed to December 21, 2012. The Mayan calendar, the most commonly cited evidence of this catastrophe, was made much like the normal calendar that ends at the turn of each year. The Mayan calendar was a long-count method, meaning that they made their calendars for hundreds, or thousands of years, and when each ended, another long-count begun. The end of the longest count in the Mayan calendar, as modern Mayan elders attest, is just the beginning of another and not the end of the world (Sitler 30). NASA has asserted that there is no planet known as Nibiru and if there indeed were a planet that was headed in the earth’s orbit, it would have been spotted over a decade ago. Even the other planet that is commonly cited, Eris, which is in fact real, is too small and far to affect any such damage. It is in the outer solar system, 4 billion miles away from earth (NASA 1). The claim that the earth may be hit by a giant meteor or asteroid is perhaps the scariest because objects are always entering the earth’s orbit from outer space. This claim is, however, mere speculation because the last meteor of such magnitude hit the earth over 65 million years ago. Its aftermath, the extinction of dinosaurs and other organisms, are well documented in evolution (Sitler 28). Christians who believe the claim go against their holy book which asserts that none but God knows when the world will end. Most religions bear more or less the same concept, and are therefore not predictive as to the end of the world. In essence, the predictions are a reaction to the natural and man-made disasters that have devastated the earth in the last few decades. Psychologists argue that the recent catastrophes have caused panic as to the repercussions and meanings. Doomsday 2012 has been touted as the end of the modern world. Proponents argue that something extraterrestrial such as a planet or meteor will obliterate the earth. They base their claims on information obtained from the Mayan calendar and urban legends. However, there is no scientific proof of a planet on its way to the earth’s orbit in the new few decades, and the probability of a meteor large enough to cause such damage is minimal. 2012 will come and pass like the one any other year, and when the world wakes up to December 22 2012, proponents will have to leave their bunkers and accept that the world will be around for a long time.

Works Cited

NASA. 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won’t End. 2009. Web. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html. 23rd October 2011. Sitler, Robert K. The 2012 Phenomenon: New Age Appropriation of an Ancient Mayan Calendar. Novo Religio: the Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions (Berkeley: University of California Press) 9 (3): 24–38, 2006. Print.

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The End of Empires and a World Remade: A Global History of Decolonization

Reviewed by g. john ikenberry, by martin thomas.

In this ambitious and sweeping study, Thomas tells the grand story of the end of European empires and the struggle for decolonization. This drama played out in different times and places across Africa, Asia, and Latin America between World War I and the 1970s. Thomas argues that decolonization was pushed forward by the forces of globalization. As the world wars dealt a deathblow to the old imperial order, new and dynamic forms of economic, cultural, and political exchange took hold, creating transnational movements and opportunities for the reordering of relations between what came to be termed the First, Second, and Third Worlds. The “rival globalizations” of Western capitalism and Soviet communism gave postcolonial nationalist movements more room for maneuver. Decolonization reshaped the world’s political geography, giving birth across the globe to novel political alignments and projects for self-determination. In this new work of history, the peoples and countries of the postcolonial world appear to have had more voice and agency than was evident in older accounts, even as they remained trapped in the lower reaches of capitalist and geopolitical hierarchies.

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By david a. lake, a life in the american century, by joseph s. nye, jr., the ecology of nations: american democracy in a fragile world order, by john m. owen iv, stay informed., thank you for signing up. stay tuned for the latest from foreign affairs ..

Ending Racism: How to Change the World in One Generation

An essay by garrison institute fellow justin michael williams.

Almost every piece of work or literature that I’ve read on racism is built on one assumption:  that it cannot end.

Or at best, that it will be a “lifelong fight.” That ending racism will be something that “will probably never happen in our generation.”

Most of the quotes you hear about the fight against racism sound something like this: “We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term.  Ours is the struggle of a lifetime , or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”  ~ John Lewis, late civil rights leader and former U.S. Representative

But, if we all continue to say, “racism is something that can never end in our generation.” Then  who the hell ever gets to take responsibility for ending it?

Enter:  us.

We still have a dream. But we are the vessel for the dreams our ancestors were unable to dream.  

The current work and research on anti-racism is phenomenal, and so is the tireless work that has been done by our ancestors for generations. But much of this work has one fatal flaw—it’s created from the automatic assumption (whether subconscious or conscious) that racism is  unlikely to ever end . And if  that’s  our starting point, —if that’s the plateau from which we’re writing our books, creating our podcasts, and doing our activism and anti-racism work—then we’re missing a big opportunity here .

I’m not saying becoming an anti-racist or dismantling white supremacy isn’t important work. The current anti-racist and equality work has  real impact— it’s  saving live s. It’s creating systemic change. It’s bringing us together.  And that matters— tremendously. I’m also not minimizing the centuries of incredible work done by civil rights leaders like John Lewis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, Patrisse Cullors, and the countless names we’ll never know. Without them, we would never have the opportunity to even  consider  ending racism.

What I am saying is this: Imagine how much  more  important our work becomes if it were done in a different context. If it were done not just as some sort of bootcamp “to be in a lifelong fight,” but with a common, united goal of actually  ending racism in this generation .

Here’s what fighting against something looks like:

Here’s what moving toward something looks like:

Congressman John Lewis was right. Our generation  does  have the opportunity to do something incredible. We have the opportunity to  end racism.  And to do it  within this generation.   

Notice what comes up for you when I say, “end racism.”

Notice what you feel when we put a  timeline  on it. Hopeful? Skeptical? Cynical?

Are you thinking to yourself, “Who does this guy think he is?” Are you wishing I would define race and racism? Hoping for a plan?

Good. That’s all part of our pathway forward.

But before we can begin to look at how to  end racism —both systemic and internalized—I think it’s important that we understand what makes racism  persist . Because once you’ve been stuck in a condition—once you’ve been working on the same recurring problem over and over to no end—it becomes important to shift the question from, “What is the problem?” to, “Why does the problem continue to persist in the first place?”

And in part, racism persists because of these five shared, yet individual assumptions:

• Racism is unavoidable.
• Race matters.
• “Those people” will never change.
• Real change takes a long time.
• We don’t know how to end it.

What do I mean by “shared, yet individual assumptions?

Before we can even get into breaking down any concepts about ending racism, we have to first explore what I mean by “shared, yet individual assumptions.” We must own and acknowledge that we, as individuals and as a collective, see things through a certain lens, or perspective. And if enough people agree on a certain perspective, then that perspective becomes our collective reality and belief. And I’m not talking about the woo-woo “law of attraction” stuff here (even though I love that stuff), I’m talking about  perception  and  belief  in the most tangible way.

For example, throughout much of ancient history, it was widely believed that the Earth was flat. People literally thought if they travelled far enough, they might fall off the edge of the Earth into an abyss of nothingness. Ancient civilizations from Greece and Egypt to Asia all believed this to be true, so they created a reality based upon that belief. We see it depicted in art, stories, religion, and ultimately, their shared beliefs about the world.

Now, I know you might be thinking, “We’ve evolved beyond that sort of foolery,” but let’s look at another untrue, yet harmless shared perspective that we all maintain today: our belief that the sun “sets.”

There’s a shared  perspective  that the sun sets, but the sun doesn’t  really  set. Think about it. Would the sun appear to  set  from the perspective of an astronaut who is far away from the Earth’s orbit? No. The Earth would be turning on its axis as it circles around the sun.

But from our  shared perspective  here on the planet, there’s an agreed-upon belief that the sun sets. On the foundation of this belief we’ve created our reality, the structure of our lives, and our world.

This leads me to an important point: Our world is created upon shared beliefs, even if those beliefs aren’t necessarily true.

So, to  end racism , we must first own and acknowledge that we, as individuals and as a collective, see things through a sometimes-faulty lens. And if enough people  choose  to see through the same faulty lens (for example: Black people should be slaves, women are inferior), then that chosen perspective becomes the context through which we live our lives. In essence, if enough people share the same socially perceived illusions, those illusions cause a certain “way of life” to persist.  

Now, with that in mind, let’s dismantle the five faulty perspectives that might be causing racism to persist.

#1: RACISM IS UNAVOIDABLE

Here’s the thing: It’s  been proven  by neuroscientists and psychologists that racism is  learned —it’s not some automatic human condition that we’re born with. It’s not something that “just happens” as a result of putting a bunch of diverse people on a planet together. And I’m not sharing this with you as an idea or opinion. It is widely respected and proven by science that racism itself is  not  “a given.” It’s not unavoidable.

What  is  likely unavoidable, however, is the fact that we create what’s called “in-groups” and “out-groups” to keep ourselves safe. And  terror management studies  show that we have a tendency to treat people in our “in-group” more kindly and people in our “out group” more harshly. Yet, even with this scientific knowledge, the idea of using  race  as a way of defining our “in-group” and “out-group” is something we can eliminate—if we try.  

But  we the people  are funny creatures. When we can’t figure out a quick solution to something, most of us label it as “unavoidable.” Inevitable. Unfortunate, but unlikely to change.

Yet, the idea that racism is “unavoidable” would be like saying the Holocaust was “unavoidable” or that American slavery was “unavoidable” or that refusing the LGBTQIA+ community the right to marry was “unavoidable.”

There’s a real danger in saying something is unavoidable, because we immediately absolve ourselves of taking  responsibility  to change it. We throw our hands up in the air and say, “Welp, can’t do anything about that.”

Can’t do anything about slavery… Can’t do anything about gay marriage… Can’t do anything about the spread of HIV… Can’t do anything about women’s rights…

Can’t do anything about racism…

Until somebody does. 

#2: RACE MATTERS

I’m going to say something that’s sometimes hard for people to face, especially for my fellow people of color:  Race  is a complete fabrication of the human mind that’s used for power and control. It’s a social construct. A delusion. An imaginary truth (or alternative fact, if you will) that we’ve  all  continued to build our lives and civilizations upon.

“There is no such thing as race. None. There is just a human race—scientifically, anthropologically.” ~ Toni Morrison, novelist and professor

Now, I want to be very clear here: I don’t want for you to think for one second that I’m saying the  effects  of racism aren’t real. The trauma, the deaths, the lives lost, and the impact of racism—and the persistent  collective belief  in the idea of “race”—has had  very real consequence s. It has created wars, dismantled countries, pitted religions against one another, and taken innocent Black and Brown lives for generations. Racism has caused incredible harm and trauma, which cannot be minimized.

I’m also not suggesting we put our cultures, values, and traditions into a Vitamix to make some vegan “we are all one” race-less smoothie. We don’t need to give up our culture, values, and traditions or become one big “melting pot” in order to end racism.

What we have the opportunity to do is far greater than that.

So, while this can be triggering or hard to stomach:  The concept of race is literally IMAGINARY . Someone created it to gain and maintain power and control. And now we use it to control ourselves.

Race is not real.

Heritage is real. Culture is real. Tradition is real. Appropriation is real. Skin color is real. Trauma is real.

But race—not real.

Or…  it’s as real as we make it.

For comparison, and to understand this more clearly, let’s consider the concept of gender. While sex is a biological  fact  of nature (we are born with different anatomy), gender is a cultural/historical  interpretation . Gender is not a fact.

Skin color is a biological fact. Race is a cultural/historical interpretation.

Race is not a fact.

The thing is, I don’t think most of us  actually  care  that much  about race. Sure, we care about our traditions, cultures, ancestors, customs, languages, and especially our foods and religious landmarks—but  race? REALLY?

Take a moment to think about it. If you could keep all of your traditions, customs, and practices, and the beauty of who we all are as differentiated unique humans with our own rituals and historical contexts; if you could continue assembling with like-minded individuals and celebrating your values and diversity; if you could keep  all that  and be treated equally with the humanity and dignity that is your birthright… how important would the individual concept of “race” be? What’s it for? What’s its function?

I gotta give it to the person who came up with the concept of “race” as a means to enforce power and control, because if their mission was to separate us—well,  it worked. 

Racism created race, not the other way around.

We were taught to care about race, so we did. Now, here we are, holding onto this “ thing ” that we don’t even  really  care about, but that’s causing us harm and pain and war and genocide and trauma over and over and over, and then saying…

“Even though we don’t care about this… Even though it’s not real… Even though it’s causing us harm… It’s unlikely to ever end.”

#3: “THOSE PEOPLE” WILL NEVER CHANGE

There is a commonly held belief that “those people” will never change, yet all throughout life, we can point to and tell stories of people who have changed. And not just “people out there,” but people in your life and family line.

I think about my buddy Greg, a white guy who grew up in Tennessee with a bunch of racist friends and family members who believed “Black people were stupid and lazy.” He said, “I used to believe that if Black people were making 20% less than whites, it’s because Black people must be working 20% less hard or weren’t as smart or capable… that something must be wrong with them genetically. Especially because I had always thought everyone had the same equal access to opportunity.”

Greg went on to say, “If I hadn’t dramatically fucked up my life… if I would’ve still been working in finance, with a house on a lake and a bunch of ‘toys’ like many of the people I grew up with, I would probably still be a white supremacist with a Confederate flag hanging from my truck.”

But that’s not the Greg I know. The Greg I know went through a massive change 15 years ago. And the reason we met was because I gave a talk at his company about ending racism and he came up to me afterward asking for resources to help his 5-year-old son grow up on the right side of history. Greg is committed to making sure his young white son doesn’t grow up racist—and even though Greg is doing his own anti-racist work, he was afraid he wasn’t equipped to teach his son properly. (I referred him to Layla Saad’s upcoming youth book and  A Kids Book about Racism  by Jelani Memory.)   Greg, a man who used to be a racist white supremacist, is now someone who cares deeply about social justice. And the change didn’t happen when he was 12. It happened when he was 35.

We all know a Greg. They’re not rare. Point to your once-racist family members, your formerly tone-deaf coworkers, your used-to-be homophobic relatives, and the ways in which you’ve personally grown over the years.

People change all the time.

Racists are not exempt.  

So, to me, the question becomes:  What causes people to change?

Is it always for selfish reasons? For financial gain? Does it take a personal relationship? A direct experience? Do they need to “fuck up their life” like Greg did?

Fine. Instead of arguing over what are the “right” and “wrong” reasons for change, let’s use them to our advantage and create a model for racial healing where those conditions can be met, and met quickly.

#4: REAL CHANGE TAKES A LONG TIME

Okay, so let’s assume we’re in agreement here. But even if we all agree racism is avoidable, that we don’t really care about the concept of race, and that people  can  change, ending racism in our generation is still unrealistic, because  real  change takes a long time. Right?

You already know what’s coming…

But before I say it, let’s look at some of the most massive changes in recent human history. The “start” and “end” dates below represent unmistakable widespread shifts. Keep in mind, a generation is typically considered to be 20-25 years.

• (1973) The first phone call made on a handheld cellular phone ⭢ (1995) Widespread global use of mobile phones =  22 years
• (1991) Creation of the World Wide Web ⭢ (2001) Total widespread use of the internet =  10 years
• (1981) First documented case of HIV in the U.S. ⭢ (1995) Ability to detect, treat, and live with HIV =  14 years
• (2004) First U.S. state legalizes same-sex marriage ⭢ (2015) National legalization of same-sex marriage =  11 years
• (1831) First knowledge of slaves escaping through the Underground Railroad and the start of abolitionism ⭢ (1865) End of the Civil War =  34 years
• (1903) Wright brothers take first flight ⭢ (1920) Widespread commercial airline travel begins =  17 years
• (1929) Start of the Great Depression ⭢ (1945) End of the Great Depression =  16 years
• (1933) Hitler’s first position of leadership and the formation of the Nazi Party ⭢ (1945) End of the Holocaust =  12 years
• (1957) First satellite launched into space ⭢ (1969) Man lands on the moon =  12 years

So, I ask the question again: Does real change take a “long time”?

In almost all of these cases, it took less than one generation (20-25 years) to make widespread global change.

Does  every  change in human history fall into this timeline? Of course not. Were there years of unrewarded labor that came before the cited “start” dates. Absolutely. My intention is not to minimize the generations of work that have come before us, but to help you notice that once the ground has been prepared—which it is now—real change  can  happen. And it can happen  fast .

So, let’s clean that smudge off of our dirty lens of perception and move on to the final point.

#5: WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO END IT

If we knew how to end racism, we would’ve already ended it… right?

(… do I even need to say it?)

The assumption that we “don’t know” how to end racism assumes there are no solutions. But that’s not true.

There are  plenty  of not just  good , but  excellent  solutions for ending racism that were created by researchers, anti-racist scholars, universities, and entire college campuses dedicated to the cause. For generations, people have created models, systems, structures, and written  The New York Times  bestselling books— any  of which could easily solve this problem. And not just hypothetically—there’s proof: We’ve seen the problem solved in micro but significant ways all throughout time—in our organizations, communities, and families.  

We aren’t waiting for “better solutions”—just like we weren’t waiting for “better solutions” to end slavery and we didn’t need “better solutions” to end the Holocaust.

As a society, as individuals, and as a collective—we needed to be  willing  and  ready .

And the same thing stands today.

We need to be  willing  and  ready  for our solutions to work.

“Are we so bound to our pain that we are not ready for liberation?” ~ Nico Cary, writer and mindfulness teacher

ENDING RACISM

So… if none of these things are causing racism to persist:

• If “Racism is unavoidable” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “Race matters” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “’Those people’ will never change” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “Real change takes a long time” is an inaccurate perspective, and
• “We don’t know how to end it” is an inaccurate perspective…  

… then what do we need to do to get racism to end? 

Well,  the same thing you do to get racism to persist— you change the shared perspective.

The purpose of this article was not to give you better solutions to end racism or a step-by-step plan on how to do it, it was to get you to consider that  ending racism in this generation  may not just be possible, but realistic— if   we’re  willing   and   ready .  

One of my dear mentors, Jim Selman, always says, “There are lots of conversations ‘about’ change, but that’s different than conversations that actually change something.”

The key to any major shift in the world has always been the same: getting enough people to not just believe a cause “matters,” but to believe that change is  possible . Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of London discovered in a  2018 study  that it takes the support of just 25% of people to make a major social shift in the world.

You might be thinking, “Well, aren’t there  already  25% of people who believe racism can end in this generation?”

I don’t think so.

I think more than 25% of people  want  racism to end. I think more than 25% of people believe racism is  wrong . I think more than 25% of people think the fight against racism  matters .

But I don’t think 25% of people have actually  considered  that they could be personally responsible for  ending racism in this generation.  I don’t think 25% of people think it can start with us. And it’s time to change that.

Our call now is simple—it’s to get people to believe.

We can’t fight to “end police brutality” just for the sake of “ending police brutality,” we need to fight against police brutality for the sake of  ending racism.  We shouldn’t be “dismantling white supremacy” just for the sake of “creating more diversity in the workplace” or “becoming nice white people,” we need to dismantle white supremacy with the intention of  ending racism .

We cannot continue to fight for the liberation of our people just to have them encaged again; we must continue to fight for the liberation of our people  to end racism in this generation .

If we want to have a breakthrough in ending racism, then we need to realize that it’s not going to happen unless we agree on a timeline for ending it. Saying it’s going to end “someday” is not a commitment. But if we put a stake in the ground and say we are going to end it in our generation, possibilities open up. A new reality emerges.

Racism  can end —and it can end in this generation—if we  believe  it can. Because if we believe it can, we shift the context of the world.

WHAT DO WE DO NEXT?

The goal now is to get as many people as possible to consider that racism  can and should   end   in this generation .

And like any meaningful change, we start by doing the work both internally  and  with our families, friends, colleagues, and communities. And ultimately, on a global scale—each of us spreading seeds of possibility to the corners of the earth that only we can reach.

You see, this is not about stopping the work that we’re already doing,  this is about doing it with a new purpose, a new intention, a new meaning, and a realizable goal.  This is about using every means available to us now and every means that becomes available to us in the future to move beyond resignation and fulfill our new, shared yet individual perspective that racism can—and will— end  in this generation.

Here are five ways that you can help right now:

• Sign the pledge.  We’ve created a  Pledge to End Racism  with a goal of getting 25% of the population to sign it. If we get 1.9 billion people to sign the pledge, we have enough power to end racism not just in the U.S., but throughout the world.
• Donate.  We launched the  Ending Racism Grant & Scholarship  Fund to support vetted individuals and grassroots organizations who have taken the Pledge to End Racism. Donate or apply  here .
• Stream  this song  as much as you can. All proceeds go straight to our mission to end racism. 
• Show your support.  After you sign the  Pledge to End Racism , display the graphic on your website, social media, or on the bumper of your car. Remember, this is about spreading an idea.
• Share.  This article is a free resource. Copy it, paste it, post it, debate it, and share it in your newsletters. Do whatever you want with it—but do it with the goal of ending racism.

And when an opportunity arises for you to end racism, you will. I can’t tell you exactly what you will do, because I don’t know exactly what opportunity will arise for you next, but when it comes—you will know. And you’ll have a choice to either end racism, or not. And you  will .

I LEAVE YOU WITH THIS

My sister Shelly Tygielski, founder of  Pandemic of Love , once said something so dear to me that I want to pass it along to you. She said, “There are two types of people in this world. The  what if’s  and the  why not’s … don’t be a  what if . They are paralyzed in their analysis. Be a  why not . Why not me? Why not now? Why not us? Why not believe… and then see what happens next?”

So, the next time someone says racism can’t end, lovingly reply with: Why not? Then, send them this article.

We the people… we still have a dream. It’s a new dream.

We are the vessel for the dreams our ancestors were unable to dream.

We are exactly who was meant to be alive at this time.

We are enough.

And we rise—together.

Justin’s program The Liberation Experience brings people together across divides –  learn more and get on the waitlist here . If you want to contact Justin directly, you can do so by  clicking here .

Freedom Flag image illustrated by  Victoria Cassinova Justin Michael Williams photo by Jamaal

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Wow! I have goosebumps. I am passionate about wellness, the healing of black people and the eradication of racism, particularly anti-black racism. The idea of ending racism in one generation has given me tremendous inspiration and energy. Let’s do this!

New Arrest Made in Knife Attack That Left 3 Dead in Germany

The authorities announced the end of a manhunt, nearly a day after the attack, which happened Friday night at a festival in the city of Solingen.

By Christopher F. Schuetze and John Yoon

The German police late Saturday made a third arrest in the fatal knife attack that took place Friday at a street festival in the western city of Solingen. An official said they had ended the search for a suspect in the stabbing episode, which killed three and injured several more, some of them seriously.

“The one we’ve been looking for all day is just now with us in custody,” the official, Herbert Reul, the state interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, said in an interview Saturday with a German broadcaster.

He cautioned that the investigation was still in its early stages. “This is someone we’ve suspected to the highest degree, but of course everything still has to be checked,” Mr. Reul said. “This all just happened.”

The authorities had earlier arrested two people who were later determined unlikely to have been the real attackers, he told ARD, the broadcaster.

The person now arrested is believed to have lived in a refugee shelter, Mr. Reul said, adding that the motive was still under investigation. The police had found evidence linked to the attack along with the suspect, he said, without specifying what kind.

At a news conference held on Saturday before the arrest, officials said that they had not ruled out a terrorist attack because no other explanation for the seemingly random violence made sense. The federal prosecutor’s office is on standby to take over the case, should the authorities conclude that the attack was a terrorist act.

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The world-ending fire : the essential Wendell Berry

In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his fifty-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities. Full description

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• A native hill
• The making of a marginal farm
• Think little
• Nature as measure
• The total economy
• Writer and region
• The work of local culture
• The unsettling of America
• The agrarian standard
• The pleasures of eating
• Horse-drawn tools and the doctrine of labor saving
• Getting along with nature
• A few words for motherhood
• The prejudice against country people
• Faustian economics
• Quantity versus form
• Word and flesh
• Why I am not going to buy a computer
• Feminism, the body, and the machine
• Family work
• Rugged individualism
• Economy and pleasure
• In distrust of movements
• In defense of literacy
• Some thoughts on citizenship and conscience in honor of Dan Pratt
• Compromise, Hell!
• The way of ignorance
• The future of agriculture

Main Language

First Counterpoint edition.

Agriculture > United States.

Farm life > United States.

Authors, American > Kentucky.

Sustainable agriculture > United States.

Sustainable agriculture > Industrial capacity.

Agriculture > Moral and ethical aspects.