Very insightful comment left on a recent post of mine by Magic Grubb:
Yeah, I’m also fed up with apocalypse doomsday crap. I know exactly what you mean when you say that you’re tired of hearing it from the groups that always seem to be pushing it. What’s amazing to me is that a certain percentage of the doomsayers seem to really get off on the idea of everything going to shit and ending horribly. And beyond that, they get off even more on the notion of “…and it’s UNSTOPPABLE. It’s GOING TO HAPPEN. for sure. There is NO ESCAPING IT.†that’s like the icing on the cake for these guys. Not only do they love the idea of the apocalypse, they love the idea that there’s no escape from it. It’s like a child who’s seen a really scary horror film and is now trying to get everyone he knows to watch it too, so he alone doesn’t feel the total weight of the worry on his shoulders.
If it’s “GOING TO HAPPENâ€â€¦and “THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT.†and we’re all going to die, (and of course, not just simply “dieâ€, but die horribly…you know, like being gang raped to death by the cast of the road warrior while forced to watch our children being fed to wild dogs, etc etc.), then why wait for it? Why don’t we all just commit suicide and get it over with? Anytime I see that same hysterical, screeching, annoyingly self involved and self defeating rhetoric posted on a forum or written in an article somewhere, that’s what I want to write to the person: “OK, you’re right. I’m going to go buy a gun after work today and shoot myself in the head. I decided I can’t take what’s DEFINITELY coming, so that’s what I’m going to do. Why bother trying, right? Like you said, ‘THERE’S NO ESCAPING IT’, so why try?†Because what other fucking reaction would make sense in light of the ugly, awful scenario they’ve mapped out for us? (remember now, it’s INEVITABLE, too.) What kind of fucking moron would sit around and actually think “Oh I’ll just wait and see…†if it’s UNDENIABLE and TOTALLY, 100% WITHOUT-A-DOUBT DEFINITE that we’re going to be thrust into a Thunderdome reality, IF we don’t all die in the process?
Well, quite a few I guess…because no one is committing suicide over this shit.
“Because what other fucking reaction would make sense in light of the ugly, awful scenario they’ve mapped out for us?” It’s rare among the counter-culture these days that anybody points this type of thing out. I think a great number of people have adopted the unconscious viewpoint that adhering to an apocalyptic philosophy is actually a positive and mentally/emotionally useful construct to commit yourself to. In some ways, I can definitely see that it is, and have used it to positive personal transformation myself. On that same conversation, Jacob commented on the usefulness of the apocalypse as a mental model:
It doesn’t make me despair; it puts me into survival mode; I become more appreciative of my life, it makes me less ham-handed in my endeavors, and it gives my life a greater feeling of significance — my focus goes to my immediate experience. I don’t get to lapse into old routines, because my whole way of life is about to go down the tubes, and so, I become less attached in general — I have to think about what I want to do and do it! It’s a great motivator for me. It isn’t just a thrill-ride or a shot of adrenaline for me — it has very real consequences for my world-view, and I how I relate myself to the world
But what do you ultimately lose in exchange for clinging to this model too literally or closely or for too long? I think Magic Grubb’s comments above highlight one possible and completely logical outcome of fully adopting an apocalyptic mindset: suicide. If everything in life is so bad, then renounce life. Only trouble is, most people who renounce life don’t do so with a shotgun in their mouth. They do so with a shotgun in their spiritual heart. They may begin to disassociate themselves with the concerns of life, and while their bodies are hear with us, acting out their parts as ever, they have committed spiritual suicide and are off drifting through the nether regions of intellectual existence.
Am I saying these people ought to put their money where their mouth is and commit actual suicide? Oh hell fuck no. I don’t think renouncing life is the right thing to do. Our fight is here.
The other logical outcome I can see arising out of a strict adherence to modern apocalypticism is not renunciation, but acceptance, even welcoming of the whole thing. It is the “bring it on!” mentality we see in Bush, among certain strains of meanstream Christians. I even see it pulsing below the surface of primitivist anti-civilization thinking as well. They often bring up how, for the earth to successfully support our species needs, a massive lessening of our population is bound to occur. At some critical point though, the idea that something like this is destined to occur can easily slip into thinking that it should occur, that we want it to occur - that, hell, I’m going to save the world, save humanity and be the one to make it occur. Admittedly, no one is quite saying that yet. But will that notion soon become acceptable? What happens when it does?
Do we have more options available here than either killing ourselves or everyone else?
- END -
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8 Comments
i’ve come to think that this addiction to apocalypse is really a way for people to cope with a sense of frustration and hopelessness. in an era where you can have millions and millions of people protesting a war before it even happens, and good reason to think elections have been hacked and the media so thoroughly locked down and permissable explosions of dissent to diffuse any real upwelling of rebellious energy…
in situations like that it’s clear some people would rather destroy the world just to get some relief. they’d rather tear it all down than face the prospect of this horror going on forever, or even worse the prosepct of some REAL WORK to make it better, rather than bitching about it and waiting for someone else to bleed for your freedom. in some ways they’ve bought into the myth of invincibility that the ruling class is selling when it’s clearly bullshit.
the elites are always one market turn away from total hysteria, and mass suicide. the elites live in abject terror of the masses smartening up, and their lives, however rich, and well appointed, are lived in the shadow of the guillotine so to speak. they learn their history, and they’re scared shitless of repeating it.
Two things:
1.) Experiencing the nearness of death is *life*-affirming to me. Apocalyptic scenarios provide easy access to that energy, because objectively, they have a lot going for them — that makes it harder for my comfort zone to con its way back into stasis, and I think that’s really what we’re getting at. You quoted Castaneda previously, about Don Juan’s attitude toward death, well, that’s as apocalyptic as it gets. For a Sorceror of Don Juan’s lineage, that attitude is attained largely by falling out of orbit with the illusory centralized control structure (super-ego) that secretly governs our lives and gives us a stable and coherent world-view (like you’ve noted before, the real conspiracy is internal.) Dismantling that illusion is pretty much central to my definition of anarchy.
2.)
Exactly! *Literally*
The potentials for abuse in another person’s ideas often has a lot more to do with the words used to convey them than the actual underlying feeling.
I think you’re dealing with a straw man. At least, the apocalyptic musings I’ve been exposed to haven’t put forth scenarios so bleak that suicide is a rational response. Even the people who anticipate a Mad Max future tend to focus on what preparations they’re going to make to defend themselves and their families and communities from the inevitable marauding gangs. On the Life After the Oil Crash forums, the survivalists even have a tongue-in-cheek shorthand for that scenario: they talk about what to do when the MZB come around, where “MZB” stands for “Mutant Zombie Bikers.”
In general, I think when people envision a Mad Max future, they envision themselves playing the role of Mad Max, not the role of the guy watching his family raped and eaten by dogs or whatever. So it’s a world where you have a chance to be a bona fide hero (or anti-hero), dealing in life and death and good and evil, and I can understand how that would appeal to a lot of people living in affluent, consumerist societies and working long hours in unfulfilling jobs.
Of course, I guess the secret is if you’re looking for that kind of existence, you can just move to Sudan or some place.
The bleakest vision of the future I’ve seen recently (not counting the Vonnegut thing, which seemed more like exasperation than prognostication) came from James Lovelock, the Gaia guy, who now believes that global warming is going to cook us and there’s nothing we can do about it. But even he has kind of a heroic fantasy outlook:
Maybe it’s just me, but I can’t read that without involuntarily thinking, “I think that Moses might be me…” Diddly doop, diddly doop, diddly doop (Wayne’s World style)…
No, I don’t think I am at all - or rather, I am doing so completely intentionally to short circuit certain trends. Either way though, I stand by this as a completely logical conclusion of a certain line of thought. I am not saying it is what MOST people think or are talking about currently. But I can see it with a certain crystal clarity that this line of apocalyptic thinking does have the inherent potential to devolve into the ideas outlined above. And I think we ought to try to head it off at the pass before it becomes a problem.
(Tim: reply to your reply at the bottom.)
Oh yeah, the other thing I wanted to say was that the question of suicide in the face of an inevitable apocalypse is a macrocosm of the question of suicide in the face of your own personal, inevitable death. I’m not a student of the subject, but my impression is that people don’t generally commit suicide just because they’re going to die some day anyway; there’s usually something else going on that makes the prospect of living through all the intervening days intolerable (or the suicide is meant to hurt someone else, or it has a political component or something like that).
It’s like when you ask people what they would do if they knew the world was going to end in a couple of days (ABC recently did this for a 20/20 special about different apocalypse scenarios). They don’t say, “I’d kill myself”; they say, “I’d try to have some good times before the End.” Specifically, a lot of people say they’d spend as much time as possible with their families. So “putting your money where your mouth is” as far as the apocalypse is concerned would more accurately be to immediately cast off all the trappings of your modern life and surround yourself with the people you love. That’s fine when you’ve only got a couple of days left, but if you know you’ve probably got years left and you don’t know when exactly the End is going to come, you can’t just go directly to the big, tearful group hug. Your arms would get tired.
So what do you do? If you boil down the preparations people seem to be making (buying land and/or gold, studying permaculture, etc.), what’s probably going on is that they’re transitioning themselves away from the kind of life that modern society expects us to have (the mortgage and the hamster wheel) so that they can begin to build one where the really important things, the things you would focus on if you had two days to live, are more central, or at least closer to hand.
(By the way, I just realized that my ideal final group hug is me, my family, and Hulk Hogan, where in the final moments, with the asteroid bearing down, the Hulkster looks over at me and says, “See you on the other side, brother.” Then his face turns to ash, etc.)
Just noticed your reply.
I’m not used to a Tim Boucher with crystal clarity.
Maybe it would help me see what you see if you pointed out a discussion or article that exhibits the dangerous ideas you’re talking about. All I see in the online apocalypse discussion genre are some heroic fantasies and a lot of people thinking about how they would reconfigure their lifestyles to focus on what’s really important to them.
I have one posting later in the week. But I will email you a sneak preview, since you asked. I have your email address, correct?
Actually, let me backtrack a bit. You’re probably right that it’s important for us not to dwell too much on whatever we feel is the upside of an apocalypse, since it distracts us from the fact that any apocalypse or collapse is going to involve a lot of horror and death.
There is something masturbatory about the whole thing.
But personally, I still believe an apocalyptic mindset is positive overall, if only because it encourages you to reevaluate and deconstruct all the cultural constructs that can seem so important. On the other hand, I can see that some people might take the whole thought process down a different, more harmful road. I just haven’t literally seen that happen, at least not in the recent online buzz on the topic.
Wires crossed again:
Yes, you do.
Jean Baudrillard’s “The Illusion of the End” is a must-read for analyzing the Apocalypse fantasy.