HULK SMASH
It is a relief inducing thought. If the world ends we have no more worries about the mortgage or the kids who aren't turning out well.
...neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be. - Robert Browing, "The Wasteland"
Hah - DWD, I beat you to it. Even had a chance to read the post and post on topic. Not well, but on point anyway.
Atrios - Isn't it amazing that this site is utilized 24/7. I love reading the overnight posts and watching them morph into the early morning posts.
Just a transferrence of an individual fear of death. Nothing to worry about here. Move along, people, move along. Read some Nietzsche.
Can it just end for them?
Is that scripturally sound?
Yeah it's twisted, but here's why I think lots of people, including myself, secretly long for the apocalypse: If you live through it, you get to abandon all of your duties and debts.
That said, I hope it comes via zombie outbreak.
YES, THERE MORE HERE AT WWW.DILBY.COM
Actually, this has been an overriding feature of modern life since the MAD era of the Cold War. In the 60s and 70s, it seemed a "certainty" that the world would blow itself up by the end of the 20th century. That ingrained, almost subconscious belief always seemed to me to be the reason projections of more long-term disaster - ozone disappearing, global warming, ruinous deficits - were never properly dealt with. Live today for tomorrow we're all gonna die!
Y2K was a problem that needed to be planned for, and everyone got to work on fixing all their code and that worked out ok. I wouldn't for a minute assume that it would have worked out ok if no one had taken the alarmism seriously and done something about it.
I do believe that Bush is about to break the country and the world economically if nothing is done to stop him.
I don't know about the environment. That is, I'm not sure which potentially catastrophic factor to pay attention to. Global Warming may actually be counter-balanced by Global Dimming, but I don't know.
I am deeply worried about self-fulfilling prophecy - people who are so sure that The End Is Near that they do everything necessary - or possible - to bring it on.
Maybe it's that as we learn more about the universe and evoloution we see how unlikely our existence is to begin with.
Maybe it's that we have been able to see how much death and destruction people are able to bring about by intention. If they can do that when they're acting "intellegently" imagine what they can do by screwing up.
After a week with a really bad cold the end of the world doesn't seem all that bad.
Funny you should bring this up, Atrios. I'm reading "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" right now. It was written in 1841, documenting all the silly things people have believed over the years, from the tuip mania, witch hunts, the crusades, and of course the end of the world prophesies.
The scene of the last judgement was expected to be at Jerusalem. In the year 999, the number of pilgrims proceeding eastward, to await the coming of the Lord in that city, was so great that they were compared to a desolating army.
Maybe Quiltlady is right. If the end of world comes, people think they don't have to struggle to stay afloat anymore.
So what are you saying? Everything is just going great?
QuiltLady, I love reading Aschaton too. When I got up this morning and read the Bonus Cat Blogging thread, I was laughing so loud I thought I'd wake the neighbors up.
I don't really want the world to end. I just find it very sad the direction the US is going in these days. I can't help but think there will be repercussions.
There's a book called The Prophet and The Astronomer that has the parrallels in science and religion of the end times. It's built into us, I don't know why the human race is collectively looking over it's shoulder but it is.
ok, ya got me. i confess to actually wanting to see great change in my lifetime. the 'end' to many things, including capitalism, racism, and a gov't of people who only govern to enrich themselves. is it true that i think the only way for those things to come to pass is thru some kind of eschaton? yes. i wish i didn't feel thatt way, but i do.
i have increasingly less pity for people who ignore facts, let emotion and religious mania rule them, and who waltz thru life believing that there will never be any consequences for their actions. i also believe that america is not the whole world, and that there are plenty of good ideas about making life better for people actually being tested in other nations. but i have little hope that the sheeple of this one will embrace change without suffering greatly first.
i wish i didn't think this way, but i do.
I really find myself puzzled over the extent to which this attitude has affected my own view. Try as I might to set it aside, it doesn't want to stay there.
I can't quite figure out why I have let this idea seep into my consciousness to the extent that I have, but there are times when I really am convinced that the End Times scenario is a self-fulfilling prophecy and the people in charge are going to see that it is fulfilled.
I think it infects everything because extremism is in charge in all the most dangerous political situations in the world right now. It may be that that is a misperception on my part - it may be that leaders aren't more extremist than at other times in the past. But it sure feels like it.
My brother thinks it's going to be the big earth eruption in Yellowstone park. Apparently this thing has not blown in like 6000 years, and the pressure or something is higher now than they have ever measured. If it blows, supposedly it could block out the earths sunlight for years.
Aschaton, oops, Eschaton. And I have no excuse. Already had my ration of coffee.
Very much OT - Interesting article in Washington Post today about the avian flu.
Don't you reall mean that these groups desire to see the end they foretell so that it can give their lives meaning and to justify the untold hours they spent working or studying about the event.
If the Rapture doesn't happen, then those who have studied about it, preached about it and labored to convert others will find they have nothing. Worse, they'll have mortgaged their entire lives.
If the ecofreaks' predictions about global warming don't turn out, then they have foregone the thrills of driving fast SUVs and buying tons of junk at cheap prices for no reason. Lots of good reasons there to hope that the predictions are accurate.
Conservatives and libertarians like the idea of terrorist attacks because it justifies their disdain for the left while proving that their overwhelming concern with security was right. Besides, they want authoritarian government anyway, so it's no big loss. Most of the dead would be in big cities too, so who cares if "those people" might have been killed, infected, etc.
The IT crowd liked the Y2K issue because it justified their exalted status within the organizations for a while. Who cares about IT geneally, except to bitch about the fact that they can't keep the systems running. With Y2K, the IT crew was promoted to a real high priesthood which was going to keep the dragons from swallowing the sun -- ooops - the Y2K bug from crashing the global computer world. See how infectious it was!
Just a transferrence of an individual fear of death. Nothing to worry about here. Move along, people, move along. Read some Nietzsche.
bobo the wonderpony
For starters, Nietzsche was nuts.
Second not everyone has a fear of death. It can be overcome. I remember the day when I was sixteen sitting in a study hall and it came to me that no matter what I did, no matter what I wanted, no matter how good I was I WAS GOIN' TO DIE! It came as a sort of relief. I remember breaking out laughing.
Some say the end is near.
Some say we'll see armaggedon soon...
One confusing point (to me) is that it seems the end-time Rapture crowd should want the world to end...it should mean salvation...but that rarely seems to be true. The end of the world in their scenario is justification for opposing the UN (among other things), because (quoting a co-worker) "Jesus said that when the world becomes one it will be the end...and that's what the UN wants, and that's why I'm against 'em."
This is mostly and OT blogwhore, but kinda-sorta related because it's about perception: I was musing about political filters today and would love input from the vaunted Atriotic commenter brigade ('cept maybe for the trolls).
For starters, Nietzsche was nuts.
Great genius oft accompanies great madness.
Certainly hope we will.
I sure could use a vacation from this
bullshit, 3-ring
circus sideshow...
I think what you are getting at, with respect to the concept of a "morbid desire to see it happen," is a sense people have that we are inexorably on this path to destruction, and we can't stand the suspense and just want to get it over with. It's like an infected cyst: painful as hell. And even though popping it will be REALLY painful, we'd rather go through that and see how we emerge on the other side. Maybe, people think, we can start rebuilding once everything falls apart completely.
I think many many people *know* in a vague and undefined way that the systems in which we live are highly dysfunctional, and that try as we might ... through dissent, protest, working at activism, etc. ... things ain't changing much - in fact things *seem* to be getting more dysfunctional, as in creating basically impenetrable structural division where in Bush's USA (for example) the rich will eventually own everything and everyone else - all the minimum wage drones left working (the rest of the work having been exported) will at 56 start having to stockpile cat food.
My guess is that many realize somehow, dimly, thatthe only way things will change as we keep moving inexorably into the future is through some shocks to the systems big enough, and hard enough, to create the openings, through fundamental necessity, for real, substantive and sustained change. Shocks that make us realize that the purpose of each one of us here on this isolated planet is to make contribution to a better and more effective human system, not pile more electronic zeros into some electronic bank account by taking advantage of and cheating and killing other humans.
Don DeLillo has a chilling analysis of such phenomena in his essay "Silhouette City: Hitler, Manson, and the Millenium."
I can't find it online, but it's in White Noise, Text and Criticism and in Viking Critical Library's edition of White Noise.
and i'm also not sanguine about the way in which many impending crises have been ignored by most. we hardly ever talk about the environment here, do we? i was just over at a lebanese paper's site reading about deforrestation in cameroon...how many of you had heard about that? eventually, nature will right the balance on this planet, be it thru some 'day after tomorrow' style adjustment, a supervirus, or something i can't imagine. it's not me saying this will happen, it's the legion of scientists and researchers who've been over in that corner screaming for the last 25 years. too bad we're all too busy buying more plastic and eating more factory food to notice or care.
i whine about how poor i am all the time, but i confess i'm also righteous about it. why? because i can take some comfort in the fact that i'm not consuming at a rate that is helping to push our environment completely out of balance. which we are, there just isn't any reason to deny it any longer.
...of freaks here in this hopeless
fucking home we call L.A.
The only way to fix it is to
flush it all away.
Can anyone point me to the part of the Bible that talks about the rapture?
Apocalyptic movements are popular in times of radical change. In some ways, I think it is a way of expressing a loss already experienced -- the world will not continue as we know it because it has changed.
Apocalyptic movements are oddly resilient. The dates of the end times can come and go and the sects readjust, reschedule, look woefully at their maxed out credit cards.
There is a difference in end time visions that involve being part of a cosmic "plan" -- those give the adherents some illusion of control. I'm not sure that environmental handwringing is quite the same.
The truly frightening prospect is that there is a lot of room between our current state and total annihilation for infinite unnecessary suffering and pain.
"This peculiar obsession humans have for watching the clock when we should be enjoying the party has been going on for millennia. And despite an utterly abysmal historical record of failure upon failure and reality’s willful refusal to call time-out, it’s one that never seems to lose its dubious charm or go mercifully away..."
Here's a fun site that addresses this issue. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/...ns/Oracle/9941/
As one of those techies that worked very hard in 1999 to make sure things didn't go to hell on January first, let me assure you, very few of us were in a panic. At one planning meeting, a non-techie project manager breathlessly asked what would I do if one of my machines broke down and due to Y2K, parts wouldn't get to me. I told her, same as any other breakdown, just cannibalize a less important machine.
The real effort in 1999 was not to keep the world from ending, it was to avoid having to do a lot of emergency fixing. The sad thing is not that the effort was wasted, but that it's the way technology should be tested and implemented all the time and isn't
History suggests that there are very few moments of true change that are appreciated as such at the time. Perhaps the fall of Constantinople, for one; the Declaration of Indepencence, another.
Chances are, we won't know the true world-changing events of these times for another century.
I have been reading so damn much about the Bush Religious beliefs, that I want to scream. If Bush is waiting for the "Rapture" to come and pick him up, then everything he is doing is to hurry the Rapture up. If Bush is a true believer in "his Rapture is coming soon", then he has no interest in making the country a better place. I am one of those, who believes that Bush is a Jesus Freak. I am scared for the rest of us. We have a looney toon in the White House.
I think some form of apocalyptic obsession/fantasy has been with us all along.
"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..."
But having grown up in North Carolina, I got repeated does of the more specific flavors of "The End is Near" from the fundamentababble and their particular interpretations of the Book of Revelations in the buy-bull. By the way, the wild imagery of that book may be explained by the fact that its author, John of Patmos, hailed from an island that is a source of psychotropic plants.
I think the founder of the modern Armageddon industry has to be acknowledged as Hal Lindsey. In its followers I have found a childish fear of death mixed with a desire for revenge against sinners that has that flavor of the nerds see the cool kids get their comeuppance. Look at the snake oil peddlers that are the televangelists, and you get what an intellectually defective following they must have.
More than their support of Israel and red calf schemes, their opposition to population control is probably the agent of fulfillment for their fantasy.
As far as particular mechanisms, I am a follower of M. King Hubbert, whose work and its implications are explained at www.die-off.org
Jean Baudrillard's "Spirit of Terrorism"
Very much OT - Interesting article in Washington Post today about the avian flu.
Mr. Tena went off on the funniest rant I've ever heard one night. He was saying that all his life he'd been taught to fear an atomic bomb and the Russians and communism and all the rest. What he should have been worrying about all along are pigs and birds and the people who let them live with them.
This was so true and so funny that I'll never forget it.
An overwhelming crisis, like climate change on a macro level or a heart attack on a personal level, is a lot easier to deal with than chronic problems like mercury pollution or being overweight.
I think there's a lot of truth to what your observation, and it's not just a product of our own era. One can see such thinking throughout history; I wonder if the comfort it provides is somehow related to the difficulty of confronting our own individual mortatlity.
This does not mean that global warming is not a very serious potential problem. It's just that it is not necessary to see it in apocalyptic terms in order to deal with it.
Global warming could be a huge, huge problem in both economic and human terms. Clearly, it is prudent to take immediate less costly steps to mitigate these future costs (particularly since steps taken with regard to energy consumption and alternatives would be beneficial in any environment).
genuine problems should not be excluded from the list too-
my own buggaboo is a fear of economic cataclysm related to the double deficit > rising interest rates > a crash in housing prices > dogs and cats living together > apocalypse!
I think the evidence all around us that we have permanently altered our own biosphere -- and can't (yet) help doing so -- weighs heavily on our collective conscience. Put another way, are we the cancer?
Great book, incidentally -- "Something New Under the Sun" by J.R. McNeill, on the irreversibility of human impact on the ecology.
I think all the various "the world is ending" scenarios is a general acknowlegement that something is very wrong with the human race these days.
Nukular Winter.
Actually, he forgot Nukular Winter.
That was the beauty of growing up in the Cold War. The Bomb was always right around the corner. There was something comforting in knowing that everyone would go at once. You wouldn't be missing any parties. No one would talk about you when you were gone. The curtain would come down and the show would be over - for everyone.
On this subject I recommend "The Sense Of An Ending" by Frank Kermode. Although it deals with theories of fiction, he talks a great deal about people's desire for a definite ending. The idea that a clock makes the sound Tick, Tock is not true. The sound is Tick, Tick but people use Tock to give resolution to even something that small.
Great genius oft accompanies great madness.
NTodd
Yes but some people are just nuts. Nietzsche's superman theory is also a dangerous idea. Who couldn't decide they were a law unto themselves based on the idea that they were superman? It all comes out to a sort of ur-Naziism. I tried to plow through some of it, remember some particularly tedious hours with the Geneology. If his name had been Smith he'd have less of a cult.
Any fucking time
Any fucking day
Learn to swim
see you down in Arizona Bay.
People are just nutz that’s all. You can’t convince them they’re nutz cause they’re just too nuyz.
Thou he would deny it now, back in the day you could send Pat Robertson a little green
and he would send you a photo of his hand. Lay the photo on the inflicted parts of your body and zippos you’re healed.
Burnt offerings to me, Ba'al, will prevent the end of the world. Just keep 'em small to prevent too much greenhouse gas accumulation.
Ba'al has spoken.
If his name had been Smith he'd have less of a cult.
lol!
It's true. The surge of ideology has gotten us to the point where it takes an extreme example to justify one's worldview. However, I do believe that climat change is a serious and at some point, irreversible factor to consider as a life altering possibility. But sometimes we all need to step back and take a breath.
Baudrillard's Spirit of Terrorism
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lis...1/
msg00083.html
As one of those techies that worked very hard in 1999 to make sure things didn't go to hell on January first, let me assure you, very few of us were in a panic.
So true. It was the anti-techs that were the most afraid. I still can't forget my kid's dentist. He had a year's supply of food, a generator and enough cash and water for a small country. LOL.
EPT - If his name had been Smith he'd have less of a cult.
What a funny and apt comment.
well, it won't end the world but it sure will rock ours:
'China says it has plans to unhook currency from U.S. dollar -but no timetable'
LONDON (AP) - China will free its currency from its peg to the U.S. dollar eventually, a central bank official told international officials Saturday, but emphasized that the weakness in the dollar is not China's concern.
China has come under heavy pressure at this weekend's Group of Seven finance ministers meeting, particularly from the United States, to move toward a flexible currency regime. Chinese officials have repeatedly suggested that the nation needs more time to reform its economy.
"We have a very firm determination leaning to a more flexible exchange rate," People's Bank of China Deputy Governor Li Ruogu said Saturday. "There is no timetable."
U.S. and European leaders argue that the yuan's peg has protected the currency from the decline in the U.S. dollar, and gives Chinese companies a huge competitive advantage -particularly in the large U.S. consumer market.
more....
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news...y&cid=1821&
nc...
There was an increase in church building in Yurp during the latter part of the tenth century.
A good proportion of the population were convinced the World would end in 1000 AD.
Nothing changes.
Just why we seem to need this menace of an imminent apocalypse is a different matter.
Chronocentrism. I think I just made that word up but I could be proven wrong. Definition: To think that the time period you exist in or your generation is height of human civilization and that the end will come soon.
Atrios: I hope you haven't restarted the Y2K debate again. The techies though some computer software/firmware needed to be fixed or we would experience minor inconveniences (ATM's might freeze-up but no planes would fall from the sky). It was their pointy-headed bosses (probably Harvard MBAs) who turned it into a panic.
Avedon's comments should be taken in light of the fact that he is British (based on his web page address). Our friends across the pond were much more sober in regard to their Y2K approach. He is probably not aware of how over-blown it was here.
Apocalyptic thinking is a symbolic way of noticing that we're living through a spectacular demographic transition. It's no wonder the sentient bacteria in our overcrowded petri dish find themselves dreaming of the end of world because whether or not we muddle through the boom and bust of the next few decades, things simply have to change in very fundmental ways.
heard some comedian say that everyone wants to die at the end of the world, cuz they you could brag about it.
Maybe one factor in this is simple psychological projection of the knowledge of one's own mortality onto society at large.
bigvic - So true. It was the anti-techs that were the most afraid. I still can't forget my kid's dentist. He had a year's supply of food, a generator and enough cash and water for a small country. LOL.
I have a good friend who was like that about Y2K. I was totally unconcerned, but she was practically frantic. She was convinced that she needed all kinds of survival gear because the world was going to be plunged into a barbaric state overnight.
I never did understand why people got so weird about it.
Baal rebukes Them:
"Why, O Gods, have Ye lowered
Your heads on top of Your knees,
Yea, upon the thrones of Your lordships?
Let a pair of Gods read the tablets of the messengers of Yam,
Of the emissaries of Judge Nahar!
O Gods, lift up Your heads
From the top of Your knees
Yea, from the thrones of Your lordships!
And I shall answer
The messengers of Yam
The emissaries of Judge Nahar!"
The Gods lift Their heads
From the top of Their knees
Yea, from the thrones of thier lordships.
Prince Baal was infuriated.
A knife He takes in the hand
A dagger in the right hand.
To smite the lads He flourishes it.
Anath siezes His right hand,
Astarte seizes His left hand:
"How canst Thou smite the messengers of Yam?
The emissaries of Judge Nahar?
They have merely brought the words of Yam-Nahar.
Word of Their Lord and Master."
But Prince Baal is infuriated. He spares the lives of the messengers; He sends Them back to Their master. He instructs Them to give His information: Baal will not bow to Prince Yam. He will not be the slave of Judge Nahar. He declares once more that He shall slay the Tyrant lord of the Gods.
the 70,000 year itch?
-J.T.
I'd like to point out the Y2K crowd was absolutely justified.
There were terrorist plots then too, that Clinton's people foiled.
Read Richard Clarke's book if you don't believe it.
They culminated- after Bu$hie stole the vote- in what happened on 9/11.
The terrorists won the US government.
Now they enrich themselves on endless war, and believe themselves immune from the disasters they create by virtue of the wealth and power they steal for themselves.
I would venture to say that this is the first time in history, that we have a group of unelected facists headed by a bumbling, braindead idiot, that is in control of the most powerful military in the history of the world. That is also in charge of a vast arsenal of nukes. Working in cooperation with a greedy, self destructive group of Dominionists. So maybe there is a legitimate reason for concern.
I'd actually not care to see what would happen if global warming continues. It's pretty ugly, not necessarily on a purely environmental scale but on a geo-politcal and sociological scale.
Climate change stands to fuck up a lot of stuff.
OTOH, for folks waiting for the Rapture, the more nasty, violent and horrid, the better. Also, sooner rather than later, too. These folks don't want to stop the Rapture - they want to do what they can in their minds to hasten it.
does "Ba'al" count burned microwaved popcorn an offering?
-J.T.
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine...
I like to read Revelations now and then, just to reassure myself that crazy visions are simply that - crazy visions.
I think people like apocalyptic visions for the same reason lots of people like horror moviews - ti's fun to scare yourself silly sometimes and then realize that life ain't so bad, really.
As to the environment, well, the only thing one person can do is live simply and try to have as little environmental impact as possible in whatever society they live in. In ours, our daily lifestyle is so screwed up that we can't help but damage the environment, but, overall, I think the environment will take care of itself in the long run. I try to live in a sustainable fashion and hope others will learn to do the same.
Create peace and simplicity in youself and let it spread to those around you. No one can do more than that to try and restore sanity to this world.
For those that haven't seen it,
JUAN COLE'S, complete and utter annihilation of Jonah Goldberg is a site to behold.
And then JAMES WOLCOTT adds a hilarious summation.
Go read 'em.
And Ba'al I gave a shout out to you on my blog for what it's worth.
I want that big fucking asteroid to hit soon.
Fret for your figure and
Fret for your latte and
Fret for your hairpiece and
Fret for your lawsuit and
Fret for your prozac and
Fret for your pilot and
Fret for your contract and
Fret for your car.
grubs and twigs: the Bu$h miracle diet
all i know about the end of the world is thatit will be the day after i go to the dentist
I've often thought that the destruction of movies like "Independence Day," "Deep Impact," and "The Day After Tomorrow" are a kind a wish-fulfillment. A wiping clean of the slate, a chance to start over, without all the complications of past history.
It's just that the world seems so complicated, and we like to fantasize starting over.
Ataturks blog is pleasing to Ba'al.
I've always thought that the anti-abortion folks and the animal rights people are peas in a pod. They are obsessed with the saving of "innocent" lives and contemptuous of everyday people muddling through their daily existence. As if only the blameless and those who rescue them have the right to live on this earth.
Remember, you can convince a paranoid person that there are no microphones and no black helicopters, but you cannot convince them that they are not important enough for the government to care what they are doing.
Yes but some people are just nuts. Nietzsche's superman theory is also a dangerous idea.
True, but don't dismiss him out of hand, even Der Wille zur Macht. His proto-fascist sis might have put it together to support her ideology, but it does have a lot of excellent insights. That was one of my favorite books from my senior seminar of existentialism.
Ba'al must retire in an attempt to be like Kalinikos Kreanga.
Hope springs eternal.
You're kidding right? Doesn't the name of your blog, "Eschaton," have anything to do with "eschatology," which refers to a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of mankind 
Chicago Dyke, could you repost the link?
Better yet, use the "pretty link" method -- and remember to use chevrons (the greater than/less than signs on the keyboard) instead of brackets:
[a href="http://url"]Link Text[/a]
BlakNo1 - It's a bullshit, 3-ring circus sideshow of .. freaks!
Learn to swim!
-
lord byron had quite the poem called "darkness" that shares his end-o-the-world vision. it's worth a read.
I think the evidence all around us that we have permanently altered our own biosphere -- and can't (yet) help doing so -- weighs heavily on our collective conscience. Put another way, are we the cancer? --On the Clock
Look, we're all animals here. Yes we alter the biosphere--that's what plants and animals do. But it is not "our own." Never will be. More often than not, we don't understand what we do the to the biophere, or what the biophere is doing to us. Some forms of life always adapt, even when they are actively being targeted for destruction. In this way, cancer sometimes seems smarter than us.
Put another way, are we too stupid to be the cancer?
I've often thought that the destruction of movies like "Independence Day," "Deep Impact," and "The Day After Tomorrow" are a kind a wish-fulfillment. A wiping clean of the slate, a chance to start over, without all the complications of past history.
I've read (on Slate, IIRC) that disaster movies are very popular during times of great change and uncertainty.
I don't think you guys understand what the rapture is all about.
1. If you become a fundie not only do you get to avoid hell, you get to leave the earth early to all kinds of adulation and glory. If you don't become a fundie, they tell you, not only are you going to hell, but you'll miss all the fun of being whisked off the earth in glory by the big violent, Nietzschean Jesus. The rapture is just something else to entice people to become a fundie.
2. It's a great big I told you so. For all the family and friends that mocked their fundie beliefs the fundie can look forward to them getting the ultimate smackdown. It's a great feeling knowing that you're so right and everyone else is so wrong and that all non-fundies are going to pay big-time for refusing this once in a lifetime deal.
John Mihelic -
Scroll down and click "Why Eschaton?"
.
Intersting facts to ponder....
1. When the clock struck 1000 AD, everyone was ready for the 2nd coming of Christ and the world to end. People gave up their worldly possessions and all that other ilk, but it never happened.
2. When the clock struck 2000 AD they were better prepared to "assist".
What I find strange is that these end-of-the-world types seem to think that a mere 1000 or even 2000 years is more than enough time. I never knew that the people of Earth had any control over the actions of God??? I always thought that God himself would choose the time...he never intended for his children on Earth to decide for themselves when it was time for the world to end. That would like allowing a 5 year old to dictate to an adult . Then again, they really aren't that much smarter than a 5 year old, are they?
regards
.
In general, people tend to have very high opinions of themselves leading to delusions of grandeur. That chronocentricism someone spoke of earlier.
Relax and have a cold one. It's a party.
It's a
Bullshit
three-ring
circus sideshow...
Nietzchean supermen or faith-based supermen. Do I get to pick?
Nietzche's superment get there through, in part, descipline.
And he only went nuts when the syphilis kicked in.
Well, the raccoons are certainly looking forward to some such event, as the destruction of humanity would finally allow them to assume their rightful place as the dominant species. They wash their food, their thumbs are almost opposable, and they have such cute little faces. Q.E.D.
A couple of things.
I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1991. There was about a three week wait between the diagnosis and the staging which would tell me what the chances of survival were. During that time I read about some famous person who had just died of cancer who was in their early fourties and I thought, jeeze, if it could happen to her, it can happen to me. The ordinariousness of me hit me like a thunderbolt. I had always thought of myself as special, and now I had to come to terms with the fact that I was just another speck of dust in ever revolving cycle. I think believing in the end times and being raptured up takes away that feeling of just being ordinary, and somehow promotes you to special. Kind of like a white person thinking well at least I'm not black. It gives them something to set themselves apart.
Lying awake half the night, worrying how my kids would manage without me nearly drove me nuts until I realized it just wouldn't be my problem and that things would probably work out, but if they didn't thee was nothing I could do. There was a certain peace with that thought.
Once I learned I wasn't going to die, I became manic trying to accomplish something, anything that would set me apart. I made a few decisions that were extremely shortsighted just so that I could accomplish something. Sometimes I get that vibe from w, that he knows he won't be around much longer and wants to make sure he leaves something of himself as a legacy.
Oh and another thing about those end-of-the-world types...ever notice that they "expect" to be swept up into heaven where they can "gloat" at those left behind? Anyone care to tell me what type of mental/emotional disorder that is?
regards
.
You people are friggin' nuts. My daddy will save the world.
He promised me..
W's legacy will be a legacy of fire.
Move to the Andes Mountains and you might be around for chapter two.
What do you mean, the techies headed for the hills before Y2K? It was the survivalists and the Christian apocalyptics who did that. There are some techies in their numbers, of course.
I remember listening to some Christian radio show in Chicago in November, 1999. This one poor guy was trying to convince his colleagues that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the Christian thing to do to head for the hills and abandon the rest of us in case Y2K really was the disaster that they thought it would be.
Avedon's comments should be taken in light of the fact that he is British (based on his web page address). Our friends across the pond were much more sober in regard to their Y2K approach. He is probably not aware of how over-blown it was here.
Um, Avedon is an American expat in Britain. And a she.
Ba'al is pissed at Yam? Does this mean sweet potatoes are not an acceptable burnt offering?
Part of the reason Saul of Tarsus transformed himself into Paul was due to his conviction that the End was Near. In the ancient world believing that the End of Days was near was common. Saul lived during one of these times.
Being a Jew, Saul needed a messiah, and from what I have read, he had quite a few to choose from. Ultimately, he settled on Jesus of Nazareth, and set about (along with the early church fathers) mythologising Jesus.
Because he lived in a world where myth was the natural way of coming to terms with history and experience, he would have been puzzled by debates among modern Christians concerning the verisimilitude of the New Testament.
The rightwing cult to Adam Smith continues unabated.
The yearning for apocalypse has, I think, a lot to do with the intersection of invincibility and intolerance. Most humans think they will survive a catastrophic event; that's what keeps them from lying in bed all day moaning at the futility of things. Most people also kind of wish that their ideological enemies would just up and disappear so the world might be free of their influence. So each group develops a theory of Armageddon, religious or natural or technological. The religious types are actually the most honest about their desires: they want to see all the sinners cast into hell while they ascend, gloating at their own spiritual purity. The eco types warn of nature's wrath, but I think many of them secretly long to witness The Day After Tomorrow, just to see James Inhofe proven wrong. And the IT types just want the machines to show the muggles that they really have been in control for years. Plus they're IT types, so their inherently strange. But curiously, none of these people think that doom is near for them. Because it's easier to survive when it's your apocalypse, and that's the only one you can conceive of actually occurring.
We all got it comin', kid.
- Bill Munny
Nobody gets out of these blues alive.
- John Lee Hooker (?)
For a couple of days in the late sixties, it did feel kinda like everybody's final plot resolution was coming up, but nah, no cigar. Back to the grindstone.
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Plus they're IT types, so their inherently strange.
Have you morons hear about the frogs that fertilize their own eggs by poducing their own sperm.
What about the microphalic alligator
We are all going to be sterile and not be able to reproduce. End of the problem.
Well count me in, although i don't think it's end times at all. I just think we're headed towards a big fat nasty singularity shithole (economically, environmentally, technologically (robotics, nano, biotech, genetic manipulation,AI) and so on.) But things will go on. (for sci-fi fans, my view of the future is captured in George Turner's fantastic dystopian novel Brain Child, which i bet nobody on this thread has read)
anyway...From the Alan Moore's Watchmen:
Ozymandias:"I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end."
Dr. Manhattan: "'In the end'? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
Duncan,
Another thing that amazes me about the "end is near" people is how many centuries they have had the belief. In the case of the Christains the end has been near since about 40 AD. And of course many others since even before that. I wonder if these people have a cognitive problem understanding the meaning of "near".
Regards, -Marc
Boy, that post hit a nerve.
I've been aware of this internally for awhile, but never expressed it. It was like a guilty thought. And here it sits front and center on Eschaton.
I'd thought maybe it was a weird form of... what would you call it? ...a larger depression. Sometimes it feels like it WOULD be a relief if it all just went down the shitter. For me, it's an increasing inability or unwillingness to keep up with increasingly bullshit societal and financial demands, a sense of oppression and fear that evil is just plain ascendant right now, and the worry that my kids aren't going to be able to make a decent life for themselves (or will be sucked into the Bush sausagemaker). It's a huge, generalized AND specific form of stress.
This does not apply to fundies praying for the Rapture -- I imagine that's just hubris.
Now, time to shut up and read what everyone else has to say. This was a head-whacker, though.
For those who haven't already, follow the suggestion above re: Juan Cole's evisceration of Jonah Goldberg: It is what the kids today might call a "bee-otch slappizle."
Tool really did sum todays feelings did'nt they?
It's my belief that this world cannot sustain itself with all the chaos being created within its ecosystem.Add to the the evolution of the species and civiliation andits progressive mannor and you have a recipe that cannot be created.
The world must undergo some kind of changes in order to sustain itself.
The more we impune on Earth's resources,the more Earth must repel those changes.It's physical law that Newton wrote"for every action,there must be an equal and opposite reaction".
I think the largest divide among human beings is the one between those who believe their existance on earth is scripted or observed and controlled by some supernatural entities and those who believe what we see and do is what we are and get. I imagine if you are on one side of that line you cannot help but imagine the other life view as a vast emptiness (that dread of imagining "an eternity of absolute nothingness without a continuation of a perfected form of living as we know it), while those across the aisle view the god believers as in a permanent hypnotic trance, like a zombie. Thus it is the central force of action in the lives of non-believers to make something worthwhile of existance, while it is the central force of those who believe soething else has given directions to follow whatever he/she believes those instructions are so they won't miss out on eternal paradise. IMHO there is nothing else that splits us into groups or nations or sizes or cultures more than this binary split.
Looking for something else on Google the other day I came across the website for VHEMT, the Voluntary Human Extinctiion Movement, an outfit that uses cute cartoons to promote racial euthanasia. I don't know if they've had the famous Philip Larkin poem "This be the Verse" set to music to serve as their anthem, but it would fit:
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
But I still think the apocalypitc thinking reflects something rather more than a gloomy fluctuation of the Zeitgeist.
Avedon, you said:..."Y2K was a problem that needed to be planned for, and everyone got to work on fixing all their code and that worked out ok.I wouldn't for a minute assume that it would have worked out ok if no one had taken the alarmism seriously and done something about it."
I hate to burst your bubble, mate, but in 1985, I took my first BASIC programming class. At the end of the semester, we had an assignment...it was December 1999. We had to figure out a way to keep out data integrity intact when the clock rolled over to 2000. The computer community were well aware of what was going on YEARS before the public. And they were working on solutions.
The only "alarmists" were those foolish to get all worked up over nothing or those looking to make a quick and easy buck of some fool that didn't know the difference between their head and their Ass.
regards
.
Some of these religious types think that they can help bring about the end times (Rapture, etc.). If they actually read their bibles, they would know that only god knows when that will be (if that will be). Do they really think that they can manipulate god so easily? In other words, just by their attempts to bring the end of the world, they are defying god. A good christian would not do that.
Oh, and google has 313 hits for chronocentrism.
And the latter Mark Twain has some dark and funny stuff about how the oyster thought it was the crown of creation, obviously, etc.
A very nice little movie is Last Night (199
- it's not the end of the world . . . there's still six hours left.
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I've read (on Slate, IIRC) that disaster movies are very popular during times of great change and uncertainty.
Actually, I think it's the opposite: disaster movies (and horror/monster stories) seem to me a way to 'act out' the basic human fear of cataclysm in times of relative stability.
Look at the dates: the era of Armageddon / Deep Impact / Independence Day / Godzilla was at the height of the late 90s dot-com boom. And while bubbles come with the promise of crashes, it felt to me as if Americans were looking for a threatening Other, whether it was aliens or a monster or a huge fuck-off asteroid.
It goes back to Beowulf and Gilgamesh and Noah. People thirst for stories where everything gets destroyed, often in peaceful times.
So the Muggles want to end the world to make it all more simple.
Scoff at their folly, people. The world doesn't end, the potential variety of consequences for each action increase geometrically.
That's their fantasy, it has nothing with the way this corner of the multiverse is constructed.
If they wreck their Murikan economy, it's their capitalistic demise most of all.
It's our task to keep civilization alive during the coming change Bu$hCo's folly must create.
It's our task to keep the world a green and growing place in the post-industrial winter ahead, and the light of knowledge aflame in the dark age the NeoTheoCons want to bring about.
At the height of the Ethipian Famine in 1885, I shared some tea with an Afar nomad named Abdullah. He had just lost his wife, six out of eight
kids and all of his cattle.
He had a faith in the future that was remrkable.
We are such spoiled fucks who cannot deal with our own mortality.
Not only does te real world hate us for our aggression. They think we are fucking nuts
RIP
Ahh, fuck it. Y'all get the hint.
QuiltLady, you set yourself apart here every day, glad you made it through. 
Here's the rub, folks...
WEverything we've done, and everything we do is irreversible.
Foucault's Maxim (slightly paraphrased):
Folks always claim to know what they are doing; they sometimes know why they do it; but they don't know and don't even ask what what they do does.
Pardon the accidental smiley. Or incidental smiley? From 1998.
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Are the Gospels Mythical?
http://print.firstthings.com/fti...les/
girard.html
I agree that all these catastrophes are a wiping clean of the slate, along with bigtime payback on those who were too wicked/stupid/apathetic to heed the gospel about them being preached by the true believers.
I'd prefer to muddle through and avoid all of these apocalyptic events in my lifetime, thank you very much.
Don't mind me...
1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 9) 0)
Just curious...
Hmm, only the 8.
And another thing, while on the subject....
Why is it that the end-of-the -world-is-within-sight crowd is only in the US?
I'm here in Europe and its business as usual. The end is not near unless the US does something really stupid. In fact, the Europeans fear what the US has become. To them is it no longer represents a beacon of Hope, but one of Dispair.
regards
.
The box turtle that carries our b