Apocalypse means: the end of the world--soon.
We live in an apocalyptic time. You can't deny it. No matter how you look at it, the end of the world is upon us. Whether is because of ecological reasons, like the gigantic hole in the ozone later fucking wiht our climate; or if its for secular reasons, dealting with the government, politics, and the economy (all of which are currently in a fucked-up state too); or even for religious reasons, like the fabled second-coming of the savior (or the first coming in some cases... or any other kind of religious docritne that describes the end of the world); whatever the reason, we all know--and are obsessed with the idea--that the world is nearing its end. Perhaps not literally, but we all recognize that the Golden Age of the world has long gone, and, well to keep with my current word choice, we're all fucked.
Now, before you optimists shoot me down and tell me I'm wrong, just listen. I know there's a chance it won't happen SOON... but i'm simply arguing that the society is currently thinking in apocalyptic terms. The history of humankind has shown it has ups and downs, and in out current time period of the sinusoidal wave of history, we've just past the peak, and are heading down into the valley. Fun stuff. However, unlike a rollercoaster where the thrill of down and up is awesome and quick... well... we all know how long it took to dig ourselves out of the Dark Ages, Great Depression, etc. Enjoy the ride.
So anyways, lets look at these three different types of apocalypses: ecological, secular, and religious.
First comes the ecological apocalypse. This is generally in the shape of all things dealing with nature, climate, space, etc. So, if an asteroid comes and hits the Earth, thats ecological (although you will find people arguing that it is religious, we wont get into that). Chances of something like that happening are actually rather substantial. As technology works now, we dont have enough resources to keep track of all the asteroids that come close to Earth, and if we do find ones that come close to Earth, there's not much we can do (in a short amount of time) for ones that are too large... at best i'm sure we could try our wonderful kinetic energy weapon... aka throwing a rock at it while its entering the atmosphere. (we did that to a sattelite recently.. lol) But there are things that could happen too... there's our wonderful hole in the ozone layer, and then there's "global climate change"--the name that's replaced "global warming"--which indicates how everything is going awry... which is causing the water levels to rise, tons fo stuff dying, etc. etc. We all know the story. After all, we should. Its a part of our apocalyptic culture. Many of us have grown up knowing these things, being taught these things. Of course there are still people out there with the mindset of "its not happening in my lifetime, so why do i care?"... but people are starting to care. Which is a start... but then these people get labeled negatively as "liberals" and "tree-huggers", etc. i have no idea how either of those words is negative. A liberal only wants to see change... why fear change when it can bring good things along? and tree-huggers love the environment and want to save it... whats wrong with either of those things? boo conservative-dominated societies. :( but whatever, thats a rant for another time.
Next is the secular apocalypse. Secular can mean a lot of things; by definition it means all of the different branches of society that are separated from one another but together create the plausibility structure of the world as we know it and establish and maintain out nomos. Translated, it just means that its all of the different areas of our culture that work together to keep things in order. So primarily, these things have to deal with the government, politics, and the economy. Lets take each of these individually. The government controls every important aspect of our life that used to be controlled by religion. Traditionally, your birth was only fully recognized when your religious group recognized you (in Baptism or whatever), but now you need a Birth Certificate and a Social Security number in order to have an identity; both of which are given to you by the Government. Traditionally, when you got married, it was strictly a religious sacrament... now it doesnt count if you dont get the civil license by the Government. And death? Yup, you guessed it. You're not fully dead unless the Government has a death certificate for you. Previously you werent dead until someone from your religion prayed for your soul, or did whatever other custom was necessary. Right? So anyways, now that we see how Government has kind of taken over the role of religion, we can see how problems with the Goverment can be apocalyptic. I dont need to explain this do I? Government goes hand in hand with Politics... and to see the mess that Politics makes, its not that hard to tell. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Iraq. Those are our modern problems... but oh? North Korea has nuclear weapons! And so does... Saudi Arabia? And like 17+ other nations in the globe... and we all know it wont take much to trigger a beautiful nuclear winter. Although this is still a reality, it isnt as scary as it was half a century ago, with the silly "duck-and-cover" schemes to protect you from radiation. hah. Oh, and as for the economy. We're slipping into a recession... hopefully it wont get worse. Inflation is bad--gas prices are going up (thanks to lack of natural resources... see how this is linked to ecology?), and because the price of gasoline goes up, the price of EVERYTHING goes up, food, clothes, everything. And then there's lovely Wally World, exploiting children in China, and also killing our economy with ruining competition from hokey pokey local places, and taking money out of the local economy. if it gets the the point of stagflation... ok lets not even get to that point. But from an economuc standpoint, things are looking bad, arent they? Real estate is as horrible as ever, and with the looming recession... people arent going to be as willing to spend, and that will only compound the problem. Economic Depression is a self-fullfilling prophecy people. Dont be scared and things will be better. "Just act like normal and keep buying things, or else the terrorists win" said both BUSH and CLINTON (two people who you never thought would agree!) after 9/11, and it still holds true now. (Speaking of terrorism, that fits under this secular apocalypse thing too.) But anyways, you get my point. The economy now is very unstable... makes me worry for the future. Almost makes me not want to have kids. Almost. Yes, i'm selfish.
And last but not least, is the religious apocalypse. I'm not going dwell too much on this one... too many branches to go off to. The literary series Left Behind depicts the christian view of it quite well. The second coming of Christ and it all goes to hell. The comic book series The Last Man does an exceptionally good job of depicting a similarly catostrophic event that occured also for religious reasons having nothing to do with Christianity. You've all heard of Nostradomus' Prophecies, right? Almost all religions have some sort of something about the end of the world... and generally its apocalyptic, meaning it will happen soon, or now. Optimistic stuff, isnt it all?
Well, if this was a formal blog i'd have written this better and more organized, and here's around the time i'd put a conclusion... but instead, draw your own conclusions. what do you think about all of this worrying that bad stuff is going to happen and its the end of the world? Want to refute or reargue or anything about anything i'd said? let me know. :)
and kudos if you read this whole thing.
(for the record this blog was spurred by a conversation with Andrew. lots of the information came from my religious class, and i just used it as a tool to expand on it and make it work with my little thesis. maybe one day i'll turn this into a paper. ... maybe i should be a humanities major? nah. :( job market is scary. i need to be an engineer. more job security.)
Now, before you optimists shoot me down and tell me I'm wrong, just listen. I know there's a chance it won't happen SOON... but i'm simply arguing that the society is currently thinking in apocalyptic terms. The history of humankind has shown it has ups and downs, and in out current time period of the sinusoidal wave of history, we've just past the peak, and are heading down into the valley. Fun stuff. However, unlike a rollercoaster where the thrill of down and up is awesome and quick... well... we all know how long it took to dig ourselves out of the Dark Ages, Great Depression, etc. Enjoy the ride.
So anyways, lets look at these three different types of apocalypses: ecological, secular, and religious.
First comes the ecological apocalypse. This is generally in the shape of all things dealing with nature, climate, space, etc. So, if an asteroid comes and hits the Earth, thats ecological (although you will find people arguing that it is religious, we wont get into that). Chances of something like that happening are actually rather substantial. As technology works now, we dont have enough resources to keep track of all the asteroids that come close to Earth, and if we do find ones that come close to Earth, there's not much we can do (in a short amount of time) for ones that are too large... at best i'm sure we could try our wonderful kinetic energy weapon... aka throwing a rock at it while its entering the atmosphere. (we did that to a sattelite recently.. lol) But there are things that could happen too... there's our wonderful hole in the ozone layer, and then there's "global climate change"--the name that's replaced "global warming"--which indicates how everything is going awry... which is causing the water levels to rise, tons fo stuff dying, etc. etc. We all know the story. After all, we should. Its a part of our apocalyptic culture. Many of us have grown up knowing these things, being taught these things. Of course there are still people out there with the mindset of "its not happening in my lifetime, so why do i care?"... but people are starting to care. Which is a start... but then these people get labeled negatively as "liberals" and "tree-huggers", etc. i have no idea how either of those words is negative. A liberal only wants to see change... why fear change when it can bring good things along? and tree-huggers love the environment and want to save it... whats wrong with either of those things? boo conservative-dominated societies. :( but whatever, thats a rant for another time.
Next is the secular apocalypse. Secular can mean a lot of things; by definition it means all of the different branches of society that are separated from one another but together create the plausibility structure of the world as we know it and establish and maintain out nomos. Translated, it just means that its all of the different areas of our culture that work together to keep things in order. So primarily, these things have to deal with the government, politics, and the economy. Lets take each of these individually. The government controls every important aspect of our life that used to be controlled by religion. Traditionally, your birth was only fully recognized when your religious group recognized you (in Baptism or whatever), but now you need a Birth Certificate and a Social Security number in order to have an identity; both of which are given to you by the Government. Traditionally, when you got married, it was strictly a religious sacrament... now it doesnt count if you dont get the civil license by the Government. And death? Yup, you guessed it. You're not fully dead unless the Government has a death certificate for you. Previously you werent dead until someone from your religion prayed for your soul, or did whatever other custom was necessary. Right? So anyways, now that we see how Government has kind of taken over the role of religion, we can see how problems with the Goverment can be apocalyptic. I dont need to explain this do I? Government goes hand in hand with Politics... and to see the mess that Politics makes, its not that hard to tell. Look at Afghanistan. Look at Iraq. Those are our modern problems... but oh? North Korea has nuclear weapons! And so does... Saudi Arabia? And like 17+ other nations in the globe... and we all know it wont take much to trigger a beautiful nuclear winter. Although this is still a reality, it isnt as scary as it was half a century ago, with the silly "duck-and-cover" schemes to protect you from radiation. hah. Oh, and as for the economy. We're slipping into a recession... hopefully it wont get worse. Inflation is bad--gas prices are going up (thanks to lack of natural resources... see how this is linked to ecology?), and because the price of gasoline goes up, the price of EVERYTHING goes up, food, clothes, everything. And then there's lovely Wally World, exploiting children in China, and also killing our economy with ruining competition from hokey pokey local places, and taking money out of the local economy. if it gets the the point of stagflation... ok lets not even get to that point. But from an economuc standpoint, things are looking bad, arent they? Real estate is as horrible as ever, and with the looming recession... people arent going to be as willing to spend, and that will only compound the problem. Economic Depression is a self-fullfilling prophecy people. Dont be scared and things will be better. "Just act like normal and keep buying things, or else the terrorists win" said both BUSH and CLINTON (two people who you never thought would agree!) after 9/11, and it still holds true now. (Speaking of terrorism, that fits under this secular apocalypse thing too.) But anyways, you get my point. The economy now is very unstable... makes me worry for the future. Almost makes me not want to have kids. Almost. Yes, i'm selfish.
And last but not least, is the religious apocalypse. I'm not going dwell too much on this one... too many branches to go off to. The literary series Left Behind depicts the christian view of it quite well. The second coming of Christ and it all goes to hell. The comic book series The Last Man does an exceptionally good job of depicting a similarly catostrophic event that occured also for religious reasons having nothing to do with Christianity. You've all heard of Nostradomus' Prophecies, right? Almost all religions have some sort of something about the end of the world... and generally its apocalyptic, meaning it will happen soon, or now. Optimistic stuff, isnt it all?
Well, if this was a formal blog i'd have written this better and more organized, and here's around the time i'd put a conclusion... but instead, draw your own conclusions. what do you think about all of this worrying that bad stuff is going to happen and its the end of the world? Want to refute or reargue or anything about anything i'd said? let me know. :)
and kudos if you read this whole thing.
(for the record this blog was spurred by a conversation with Andrew. lots of the information came from my religious class, and i just used it as a tool to expand on it and make it work with my little thesis. maybe one day i'll turn this into a paper. ... maybe i should be a humanities major? nah. :( job market is scary. i need to be an engineer. more job security.)