Apocalypse Now? The Strange Common Dream of World's End

One thing that never fails to astound me is the endless fascination, particularly in Western Civilization with the End of the World. I suppose that had John of Patmos had any inkling of the bestseller potential of the Book of Revelations, he would have found a Roman publisher and tried to cash in on the royalties. (Then again, the Bible is one of the great bestsellers of all time, I wonder if it would have been as successful without its admittedly bizarre finale.)

What I find particularly interesting is that not all popular eschatology (end of the world studies for those of you who didn't waste away in years of study in the humanities) is religious-based. Consider traditional Marxism/Communism for example. The world in a current state of imperfection/sin (capitalism) will grow progressively worse for the chosen people (proletarians) until finally an apocalyptic event will cleanse the earth (world revolution) after which a better world will result with freedom and equality for all. Note also that under this system, true believers (in this case orthodox Communists or Marxists) are to prepare for this event so that they can take a leading role as the crisis occurs. Indeed, amongst the some groups, there existed an ethos not unlike those who seek to trigger the rapture amongst Christians, in this case they attempt to take charge of the tide of history and launch a preemptive revolution.

Nor is Marxism alone in demonstrating these apocalyptic characteristics. Since the 1970's the oil and resource shocks have created the narrative of Hubbard's Peak, the point at which oil production reaches its maximum limit, after which massive shortages follow. Under this scenario, massive wars over resources soon ensue, laying a majority of the planet waste and leaving the survivors in a wretched state of ruin, but free nonetheless to create a new world, if only they can find ways to survive.

Let us not forget all the popular fiction dealing with the destruction of civilization, be it through Aliens, plagues, natural disaster, or itchy fingers on the nuclear trigger. In each case our lazy, decadent and ultimately stagnant civilization is brought to a swift, shocking and brutal end through the unfeeling hand of circumstance, all to often using the very tools we have created to give us comfort and power.

I wonder at the popularity of such an altogether disturbing topic. Is it shock value, the seeming unbelievability of such an event that draws our eyes toward the dystopian vision? Perhaps like a car wreck, it's just too difficult to turn away. Then again, perhaps it taps into the the deep, unspoken fears of every human being, that our civilization, just like our own supposedly civilized nature, is just a thin, precarious veneer, that all to easily can be stripped away leaving us, much like our primordial ancestors, naked and alone at the mercy of nature. Then again, maybe 2000 years of predicting the end has hard-wired us culturally, so that we cannot but believe that it can never last.

that people who think this way are seriously inconvenienced by some aspect of current civilization, and hope to escape that which annoys or threatens them. The person loaded down in debt and feeling like he will never be able to break even financially sees the collapse of the economy as a get out of jail free card. When the banks and loan companies go out of business they can't keep hounding him about his bills.

Some people have a problem with "immorality". In other words, they are annoyed because not everyone shares their narrow sense of right and wrong. For them, all the "bad people" will be punished by some deity, and they get off scott free to live in paradise.

Some people are stuck at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder and their get out of jail free card is when civilization implodes and all the rich, fat, lazy people starve to death because they don't know how to grow their own food. Think of how self-righteous one can feel imagining himself harvesting his own food while the rich bastards all perish.

Look closely at these movements and you'll find two forces at work: (1) revenge of the "righteous" on the "unrighteous" (i.e. anyone who disagrees with me), and (2) a get out of jail free card that, in one stroke, wipes away everything about the world that I find annoying, burdensome, or objectionable, leaving the "chosen one" in a state of blissful paradise (e.g. literal biblical paradise, or some earthly form such as a self-sufficient Amish-style homestead where all is milk and honey.)

I do, however, think that SOME of those who worry about global warming, population, resource depletion, and economic instability, are being realistic in their concerns. Others in the environmental and peak oil movements are still just looking for righteous revenge and get our of jail free cards.

ed: typo

I think also that a lot of people have a hard time dealing with a sense of perpetuity. We get so used to things ending, movies end, the school year ends life eventually ends, so we become obsessed with the end of history.

Also, this obsession grows ever stronger when things are bad, as people seem to see not only their own problems but the magnitude and complexity of the problems society faces, I think they assume a brutal tabula rasa is preferable to sorting out the whole mess.

The late Eighties.

I was reading through it, and I was most amazed to realize that many people thought that that Convergence of late summer 1987 was going to mark the end of the world.

It is always something, isn't it??
Anyway I was pleased that on the History channel, there was a discussion of the End Times, and the speakers took into consideration the Apocalpyse of the Bible.

They agreed that The End Times was about an INNER battle of good versus evil.

The Right Wing Christians are taking it to be anouter battle - They designate the Muslims as the bad guys and the RW Christians as the good ones.

But that interpretation is flawed.

Is in Matthew 24, where it is stated directly that no man knows the day or time of the Second Coming. As such, it is the height of arrogance to assume that you can preemptively cause it to happen through any action of your own. As to the rapture, it is anti-canonical to begin with. How to the evangelicals know that they aren't the very enemy noted in Revelations, for I have seen them do more to corrupt the principles of Christianity in recent history than many others.

Thanks for the flashback :-)

whatever they want.

Seriously...nobody ever puts themselves in the role of one the sheep running through the street while the apocalypse is happening. They see themselves as heroes, or even villains...the main characters of new adventure.

And the reality never sinks in. That the "end of the world" would never be the fun time they think it would. Working in a cubicle and coming home to your small, ratty, but comfortable apartment is way better than sleeping in an alley while the rats bite your limbs and savages rape your family.

The scariest parts of watching the most recent "War of the Worlds" was not seeing the aliens vaporize millions of people, but seeing the horrific way humans act when in crisis.

Being a student of Modern European history, I have the barest understanding (but an understanding nonetheless) of what happens when all hell breaks loose, believe me under such circumstances we will all end up envying the dead.

On one hand, I thought it handled the madness of human beings VERY well. There were no heroes...there was simply survival. The men who tried to be heroes were quickly wiped out. I found that very realistic.

Of course, then ending sucked and the aliens acted completely immplausibly (Come on...seriously...haven't aliens heard of viruses or hepa filters). And the Dakota Spamming was annoying.

H. G. Welles who wrote this at the dawn of the 20th Century, was seeking to show that all our mighty weaponry was in the end not as deadly as a small virus or disease. This was a difficult working into Spielberg's film.

That said, it remind's me of the Andromeda Strain, and the fact that every invasion faces variables that were initially unforseen.

It's part of our history, these boom and bust times in which everything that had been built and relied upon is destroyed "and nothing beside remains." Egypt, Athens, Rome, the British Empire--all shadows of their former selves or gone entirely. I think there's a belief that it could all happen again, a new "Dark" Ages when so much will be lost and people will just be trying to survive.

but much the same has happened in Asian civilizations, such as India, China, etc... yet none of them seem as obsessed about a coming apocalypse as we. As I'm not as familiar with these civilizations as I ought, perhaps I'm wrong, if so please let me know.

That doesn't mean that it's not there.

Take China, though. The Middle Kingdom was still always the Middle Kingdom for thousands of years, regardless of who was in power. It's the most ancient of civilizations. Who in the West can really claim that?

--and that was the signal for all hell to break loose until someone established a new dynasty.

My Chinese history is sketchy, but fron what I remember from college, they never really had anything like the so-called Dark Ages.

because their religions tend to see history unfolding in cyclical ages and ours follow a single arc with one beginning and one end.

The current fascination with the Maya calendar holds equally true. The Maya saw the world as a cycle of 5200 year segments. In 2012 the most current segment ends. With our very linear vision of history, many see this as a prediction of the end, and will be somewhat disappointed if all hell doesn't break loose that day.

as we near 2012 will be nuttier and more pensive than the Y2K rollover. Since the date also coincides with early predictions for the arrival of the "singularity" (of maximum novelty), it'll be double the fun.

I think our pop entertainment had a hand in getting us here, too. Ever more realistic depictions of dystopia/armageddon since the start of the nuclear age probably helped make the religious-minded receptive to the cinematic eschatologies of Hal Lindsay and Tim LaHaye.

... who remarked (about the time Bishop Berkeley announced the Bible said the world had been created in 4004 BC) that "everyone knows how old the world is. It is three weeks older than ourselves".

The point being that it's not easy to imagine the world without oneself in it -- and so, the temptation to believe it won't go on after one's own death is strong, and many people have found a certain comfort in seeing signs and prophecies that it will end soon. Apres nous, le deluge...

who are involved with myths about the creation of the world/universe and its end.

They seem mesmerized by such things as end-times and are completely ignorant of such minor things as the end of our solar system as we know it.

I suppose I could have called it the Apocalypse of St. John, its other name as well.

:hi:

Nuclear nightmares, fallout shelters, duck and cover, Twilight Zone, the Commies . . . ah, those were the days.

"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours."

TALKING WWIII BLUES
Bob Dylan

Some time ago a crazy dream came to me,
I dreamt I was walkin' into World War Three,
I went to the doctor the very next day
To see what kinda words he could say.
He said it was a bad dream.
I wouldn't worry 'bout it none, though,
They were my own dreams and they're only in my head.

I said, "Hold it, Doc, a World War passed through my brain."
He said, "Nurse, get your pad, this boy's insane,"
He grabbed my arm, I said "Ouch!"
As I landed on the psychiatric couch,
He said, "Tell me about it."

Well, the whole thing started at 3 o'clock fast,
It was all over by quarter past.
I was down in the sewer with some little lover
When I peeked out from a manhole cover
Wondering who turned the lights on.

Well, I got up and walked around
And up and down the lonesome town.
I stood a-wondering which way to go,
I lit a cigarette on a parking meter
And walked on down the road.
It was a normal day.

Well, I rung the fallout shelter bell
And I leaned my head and I gave a yell,
"Give me a string bean, I'm a hungry man."
A shotgun fired and away I ran.
I don't blame them too much though,
He didn't know me.

Down at the corner by a hot-dog stand
I seen a man, I said, "Howdy friend,
I guess there's just us two."
He screamed a bit and away he flew.
Thought I was a Communist.

Well, I spied a girl and before she could leave,
"Let's go and play Adam and Eve."
I took her by the hand and my heart it was thumpin'
When she said, "Hey man, you crazy or sumpin',
You see what happened last time they started."

Well, I seen a Cadillac window uptown
And there was nobody aroun',
I got into the driver's seat
And I drove 42nd Street
In my Cadillac.
Good car to drive after a war.

Well, I remember seein' some ad,
So I turned on my Conelrad.
But I didn't pay my Con Ed bill,
So the radio didn't work so well.
Turned on my player-
It was Rock-A-Day, Johnny singin',
"Tell Your Ma, Tell Your Pa,
Our Loves Are Gonna Grow Ooh-wah, Ooh-wah."

I was feelin' kinda lonesome and blue,
I needed somebody to talk to.
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind.
"When you hear the beep
It will be three o'clock,"
She said that for over an hour
And I hung it up.

Well, the doctor interrupted me just about then,
Sayin, "Hey I've been havin' the same old dreams,
But mine was a little different you see.
I dreamt that the only person left after the war was me.
I didn't see you around."

Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody's having them dreams.
Everybody sees themselves walkin' around with no one else.
Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.

Apocalyptic thought is in our cultural genetic code. Brutal Irony then that the culture most obsessed with the end of the world, would be the first that developed the weapons that could do it.

As we age, the birth/grow/fuck(rebirth)/die cycle starts to hit home a little harder.

It's a cycle that never, never ends - unless you consider apocalypse. For some civilizations, it actually happened. Indus Valley, the Greeks (to a lesser extent), the Romans. Aztecs. Allegedly, Atlantis. With the closing of their cycles, their ways were lost.

As a literary device, alone, it's incredibly powerful.

Yet I think you're right also on the idea that an Apocalypse means the cycle breaks. For some that break is essential, for an endless cycle is terrifying for some to comprehend. They need a clean break, a beginning and an end. For such, an apocalypse means that we don't have to deal with the accumulated crap of society, it will all be wiped out, and we can start fresh. Kind of like pack rats who would rather burn down their house than clean it up.

But from the biological standpoint, calamity.

Consider the anti-gay bias. A cousin of mine, someone who might be described as a "compassionate conservative," once voiced an opposition to gays having children. His reasoning: it's nature's way of saying that particular line of DNA had gone as far as it should go. Eugenics? Or apocalyptic?

I would argue that from the social and personal standpoint as well. As a poster upthread pointed out, no one wants to see themselves as the one of the doomed people in the fleeing crowd, but odds are that all of us would end up in that group.

...and it will all happen again."

Made me think of that line from Battlestar Galactica (and from Peter Pan I had just remembered, too)

...& start up again the next. Apocalyptic notions seem to me to be, largely, ways for their believers to feel important, as if something exciting might happen to them someday.

On the other hand, in case the world _does_ end unexpectedly, I make sure to keep my camera loaded with color film.

"All video tapes were destroyed in 2216 at the Second Coming of Jesus."

The Marxian versions represent an attempt to combine an economic theory of political conflict with a motivational vision of a different economic arrangement -- and do not seem to bear any close relation to ideas in the text of Revelation. The Marxian versions, for example, do not really assume "a final apocalytic event." Typically, the Marxian vision imagines that careful political analyses of local economic conditions will allow the organization of various (currently unorganized, confused, and exploited ) class interest groups to fight effectively for fairer economic arrangements

That the industrial destruction of natural eco-systems potentially threatens much life on earth seems to be indisputable scientific fact: one need only look at the recent rate of species extinction and anthropogenic changes to the gross physics of the planet. Overfishing of ocean stocks, deforestation of large continental areas, abiotic regions in the ocean -- are OBSERVATIONS of large-scale destruction by known human activities, activities which are ongoing and accelerating

All I'm saying is that Western Civ seems to have Apocalyptic change on the brain. Marxism, as a product of Western Civ, has a strain of apocalypticism within it as well. It sees the world as it currently exists in its capitalist state as flawed, and (when it advocates revolution) sees cataclysmic change as the only way to fix the flaw.

As to ecological theories of the end, they are compelling and accurate. I'm not saying that things can go on as they always have, it's pretty clear they can't. It's just interesting to see how this realization mixes with the eschatological tendencies in the traditions of the west.

is the result of a well thought out propoganda/mind control operation.
It started with that Lahaye asshole and his series of books.

It amazes me how many people have been infected by it.