All this talk of prophecy still has my mind whirring with connections and possibilities. Personally, I think that’s the whole point of prophecy: to reframe things in new ways. In a post on my Story-Systems site, I address this more directly:

We also tend to use these stories as an alternative context for understanding our lives. When we identify with a character in a story, suddenly their experiences become our experiences. Their relationships become our relationships. And vice versa. We project ourselves and our lives onto the story, and we pull the story inside of us.

By changing the old familiar emphasis of our life stories, we see with new eyes. Suddenly we grasp new insight into old problems. We explore new possibilities and sides of ourselves we’ve been neglecting. We ask important questions about what makes us similar and different with the stories and the characters we are experiencing.

Essentially, this is the purpose of prophecy. It is not to predict the future, it’s to give us a new context to what’s going on in our lives right this second. This reminded me of a quote from Douglas Rushkoff which I used recently in an article on David Icke’s Reptilian Aliens:

Media viruses exploit our repressed thoughts and energies … They are the hidden agendas of our popular culture–the closeted issues we have become too oppressive (or too politically correct?) to discuss in the light of day. If we are afraid to face spousal brutality, we get John Bobbit. Afraid of interracial marriage? O.J. An absolute monarchy? Camilla-gate. Child abuse? Michael Jackson. Disillusion of motherhood? Susan Smith. Media viruses present us, in cartoonish simplicity and amplification, with the unspoken issues of our cultural present. They crystallize for us our diffused ambiguities so that we may discuss them in the safety of the ‘third person.’ They are like dreams and … tend to present us with the most pressing issues of our collective psychic shadow.

Reading that again, I realized his description of “media viruses” is pretty much exactly the same as what I’ve been getting at in regards to prophecy as a type of social commentary. Prophecies act like dreams, giving us a world re-drawn in “cartoonish simplicity and amplification”. The good guys are GOOD and the bad guys are the WORST THING YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE.

It’s like I said recently about Apocalypse fantasies as being a sort of pornography for the symbolic side of your mind: Your wife doesn’t understand you? Don’t worry, cause ten hot college lesbians want to fuck and suck you dry. Your boss is a jerk? Don’t worry, cause when you get lifted up to God’s ample bosom in the Rapture, Mr. Harvard MBA is gonna be stuck here toiling away in the Devil’s latrine. Both porno and prophecy can be a whole lot of fun, the thing to remember though is that it’s not really an accurate depiction of how the world works. They are cartoon versions of real life designed to fulfill our fantasies and show us life in a totally new way. If you want to sit around and jerk off to them, by all means, indulge yourself. But when you’re done, please clean up after yourself. I don’t want to be slipping on the mess you left.