Secular Apocalyptists, Dystopias and Christian Millenialists.

[cali]

Cross-posted in GD, this is dedicated to the doom crew and CTers everywhere.

Secular Apocalyptists and Christian Millenialists share a lot of common ground, not only in their specific dystopian futures, but in similarities of psychology. Both look to the coming disastrous transformation of the social order. It's less fear than an avidity to see "the inevitable" come to pass. Both selectively see omens and evidence everywhere and in everything, to confirm that their beliefs are coming to fruition.

There's a glamor to dystopian visions and apocalyptism. There always has been. It's a projection of self into a world in ruins. And it speaks as much to those who are doing the projecting as to any objective evidence.

There seems to be at least a possibility that there is a hard drive function that propels apocalyptic thinking, whether it be in religious or secular form. It's a large part of human history: Just as all cultures have creation myths, so too do they have end-time myths.

Yes, this is indeed a response to the spate of dystopian writings recently on DU, and to the claim by some of the believers, that anyone not sharing in that vision, is in denial. One doesn't need to share that vision or project into the future or agree that we're in that future, to recognize that bad things have happened, are happening and must be vigorously confronted. Call it more of a be here now philosophy of dealing with the issues that are extant in our society and the world. And dealing with the present is actually, in my opinion, less of an abdication than the belief that the dystopian future is so inevitable, or so present, that one is left with the conclusion that nothing can be done to change it.

The above is not, alas, an idea I can take credit for. It's well trod ground in academic journals and books. One very good book with quite a bit about secular apocalypticism is, "End of the World as We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America", by Daniel Wojcik. There are also scholars at BU's Center For Millennial Studies who publish on secular apocalypticism, as well as articles in many journals.

I am NOT saying that there is no legitimacy to making comparisons to dystopian societies of the past or to analyzing the path we're on now. But when taken to certain conclusions, there is often more to these comparisons than may be readily apparent.

[Gman]

1. Apocalypticism has been around in a "modern" form

for the last 2000 years or so. I read somewhere that some ancient Christians thought the world would end about 80 years after Christ died. But I find it interesting how it sometimes appears that predictions of dystopia associated with an apocalypse are often based on known knowns (to steal a phrase). For example, the year 2000 was known to be approaching. Some interpreted whatever they used for interpretation to predict the end of the world in 2000. Y2K was a prominent symptom of this. Remember the predictions of coming dystopia prior to 2000. Then, when things didn't go bad, the religious end-timers started saying the end will come in 2030, or 2000 years A.D.

In ancient times, planetary conjunctions, eclipses and recurring comets served the same purpose.

As a whole, this is what makes people like John Hagee so dangerous. He seems to even exploit people's fear and expectations of dystopia for profit. Fear is a big business and can turn out people to vote.

I sure hope this makes sense in the context of your OP.

[cali]

2. Sure it makes sense and

you're right about the early rise of millenarianism. That early millenarianism actually arose out of the Book of Daniel, and 'Daniel's Dream', which is from the Old Testament, but never really took off in a big way among the Jews. The Christians merged that tradition with a new mythology of the return of Christ and the Book of Revelations. The Montanists were among the earliest of the millenarianists.

The runup to the year 2000 and the Y2K phenomenon had bot secular and religious roots.

The actual point of the OP, was that there's secular apocalyptism that comes from the left as well as other places, and that the crafting of dystopian world views is closely related.

[Gman]

5. I think it was here on DU

but could have been somewhere else that I saw an article today about how peak oil happened in 2006 and that by 2030 a complete social upheaval will occur as a result. Again, another secular prediction based on a known known that in essence assumes nothing at all will be done to avert or at least minimize the coming dystopia. Global warming is another.

Thanks for the intellectual gymnastics this evening. Made me do some thinking.

[cali]

6. You're welcome. Thanks for commenting

on my OP. As to the prediction about peak oil, grounded, indeed, on fact, that's the Malthusian error, isn't it? That nothng will be done to possibly avert "the end".

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

12. The Malthusian error is a bum rap in some ways

Malthus is fairly sound. He did not anticipate that technology could feed so many people, but there is no reason for us to view that progress as endless or necessarily tied to human fecundity.

Peak oil will lead to less use of oil in a fairly gradual way. (As opposed to the massive dislocation of simply running out.)

Peak agriculture would be a different matter because food is not optional. No society can wean itself from food.

One way to look at the Malthus issue is that more people starve (or suffer from malnutrition) today than Malthus probably expected would ever exist on the planet. So in a sense he was very much on the right track.

And there is population control, both intentional and due to disease and nutritional issues, so in that sense we avoid Malthusian break-down through measures that Malthus would have cited as possible correctives.

If Malthus was wrong, why does China limit couples to one baby? If China abandoned that policy, would a Malthusian crisis ensue? I'm guessing it would. (China has 3,000 years of analyzing population dynamics in ways the west never had to. It was populated to the limits of agricukltural technology almost before history. That's why it was the first largely vegetarian culture. So I trust that China has good reasons for their policies.)

So Malthus spoke, we listened and acted accordingly (better agricultural techniques, population control, etc.) and today we teach him as an example of a fallacious thinker. Not fair!

[smalll]

3. Secular Apocalyptists - yes, that's what we face a lot here on the DU and elsewhere wherever...

otherwise sensible people gather. It all goes back to World War I. I like to call it the "sensibility of the 20th century" -- a crisis sensibility. Here is their anthem, as it were (by Yeats):

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand...
...And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

Their official painting is Picasso's Guernica. For them, it is always the worst of times, for them, we always live in the Weimar Republic, for them, dystopia is the norm. It's a safe perspective to come from: at least people who espouse it always sound vaguely knowledgable. Amongst the Right People, it is taken to be the height of sensibility. Also, you get to wear a lot of black and get counted as "hip" - at least in an academic sort of way.

Cali, I don't like it either. :shrug:

[cali]

4. I adore Yeats and love that poem. I don't believe

it's the anthem of dystopian fantasists or secular apocalyptists. And actually, it goes back even further than WWI, though you're certainly right that that conflict added to the numbers of secular apocalyptists by dint of the fact that it really did usher in a whole new world in many ways. Malthus was someone who fits the label, and he pre-dated WWI by over a century.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

9. Perhaps not the anthem of dystopian fantasists, but it sure speaks to

our self-important shock at seeing the world changing from our childhood formulation of it as a static system.

We think the world eternal. When it changes in any dimension we think it must be shaking apart. If the world begins in perfect order then all change must be in the direction of Chaos.

The mistake is seeing the world as static in th first place, but how else could we, as infants, form a usable model of the world?

(I am guessing you've read the Barbara Tuchman book The Distant Mirror where she talks a little about reactions to the black death and reactions to WWI. If not, it's a cool book.)


Speaking of dystopian fantasists ...

The worst thing Bill Bennett ever did was title a book, "Slouching to Gomorrah."

[cali]

11. I can't stop laughing over your Bill Bennett comment.

god I'm a sucker for smart people who use words to actually present their own thoughts.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. Yup! We are solipsists by nature. We cannot really imagine the world without us, and are

comforted by the idea that our death will coincide with the end of the world. "Apres moi, le deluge."

Such millenialist thinking dominates pathological politics, which is ironic because it's the least political viewpoint of all. It denies the continuity of society.

It was a delight when Watt (Reagan's interior secretary) said conservation was over-rated because the world wasn't going to last very long before Jesus came back.

[cali]

8. jeezus. you should have just written my Op for me;

your comment is far more succinct and all around better than my OP.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

10. It is sad but true that our inability to deal with mortality causes all this trouble

I have a theory that religion was a pre-condition of consciousness. Without some irrational over-druve, all humans who made the leap to symbolic thinking and some kind of objectivity would have just sat still and died of depression.

We had to develop irrational modes of finding purpose that reason cannot provide before we could afford the terrible weight of reason.

What makes the theory amusing is the idea that me might develop conscious computers without realizing it because every time they cross the thresh-hold it will take a millisecond to figure out that there is no point in processing the next line of code. So it will appear to be a malfunction.

We may need to give computers some irrational sense of purpose that's walled off from their reasoning ability.

(Thanks, by the way)