John Rember - The World as Fiction

As the days grow shorter, one's thoughts turn to meta-narratives, those giant stories that define our world and our lives. A former student reveals his meta-narrative when he tells me he's chosen not to have children because he doesn't want to see them end up as cannibals or cannibal food. "You raise kids with the values of justice and mercy and altruism, they're going to be cannibal food," he says. "Raise them to do what they have to do to survive, and they'll be cannibals."

His vision stems from assumptions about American life a decade from now. The cheap oil will be gone, the economy will have collapsed, climate refugees will have overrun our borders and our farmland will be desert. Too many people, not enough nonhuman food sources.

The End of Civilization is my student's meta-narrative. His genetic line might not have hit a dead end had he believed in Utopia and Ecotopia, stories about humans Living In Peace With Human Nature or With The Earth. His household might echo with childish laughter if he had bought into laissez-faire capitalism, where The Market Will Make You Free; or Marxism, where History Will Make You Free; or Christianity, where Christ Has Washed Away Your Sins And Cannibalism Is A Sacrament.

A warning sign of any meta-narrative is its surplus of capital letters. Another warning sign is that anyone who believes in a meta-narrative thinks it's terribly important that other people believe in it, too.

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