Notes on apocalypse
January 3rd 2007 04:42
* There are different ends -- there is end of the universe, end of mankind, end of civilization. And there is the end, simply, of what you know -- your city, community, family.
* It's deniable that the Holocaust or Nanking count as apocalypse. What's less deniable is how they felt for those within them.
* In a sense, it's very easy to raise hell on earth.
Is it misnamed?
* The fact of apocalypse might prove or disprove God, or might have nothing to say on the matter. But what it makes stark is the question of how to spend your remaining time. No memento mori necessary.
* Though what's meaningful for short spaces might differ from what's meaningful for long. If told I had a month left, I might think the most important thing is to finish my novel. Given a year, I might forget the novel, and want to spawn kids. Given a decade, I might think happiness is maximized if I use up the entire time in quiet contentment, with no novel, and no kids.
The four horsemen
* Finitude of the species can be taken to show that everything is meaningless -- if the only meaningful things are lasting.
The comparative size of Earth in "Men in black" could demonstrate the insignificance of the planet.
This is a common Aurelian thought -- "Let your imagination dwell continually upon the whole of Time and the whole of Substance, and realize that their several parts are, by comparison with Substance, a fig-seed; by comparison with Time, the turn of a gimlet." (10.17)
And it belongs, also, to Monty Python's Galaxy Song.
The Black Death
Danse macabre
Things make sense under apocalypse.
* But the apocalyptic mode of thought is something every mind will pass through, just as everyone will reflect on their own cessation.
In Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, a fisherman, Jonas Persson cannot stop thinking about the hydrogen bomb... He kills himself with a rifle, and God is silent.
Well, one wants to avoid the whole process, firstly. But death and decline are also the trace beneath experience and action. Not simply in terms of inevitability, like a looming cloud, or a worry at the back of the mind, but in terms of the significance and demand of decline and death.
On the one hand, there is the boundedness of things, your own boundedness, and the consequences of these -- which affect, for instance, how you read and react to the world.
On the other hand, there is death's unanswerable demand to be understood, to be dealt with.
* Dworkin writes that the manner of people's dying is important to them, like the last act of a play.
* Apocalypse is not simply comtemplation of the end so far as it affects you. It lies in identification with the world, relies on a concept of self that temporarily extends beyond biological borders.
And just as losing a limb is secondary to biological death, so all the problems of society become secondary to the possibility, however slim, of group annihilation.
***
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses images from the Wikipedia articles The Terminator, Armageddon (film), Apocalypse Now, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Black Death, Winter Light.
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Comment by Oblivion
I wish you would have extended a little bit more about the ending in Men In Black 2. How they open that locker and find themselves in a small corner of someone else's reality! Mind-boggling!!!
I knew you would mention Monty Python, call it intuition. So, what's next. How about the Bruce's Philosophy Song or the International Philosophy Skit?
I found your comment about Ingmar Bergman's book Winter Light interesting... is it a good read? I'm considering getting it now.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I hadn't actually seen the International Philosophy match -- had to go track it down.
"Winter Light" is a movie rather than a book. The second in a series about loss of faith, and one of Bergman's favourite movies. It's sort of what might be called a "chamber piece" -- small cast, few settings, focus on acting... Maybe the image above sums it up -- sombre colours, a priest concentrating, with sweat on his brow.
It's not a long movie, but, by modern expectations, it's slow, and perhaps one needs to have some experience of religion to sympathize with what the problem is.
I personally like it a great deal.
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
...another great post, again drawing me out to write instead of just vote!
A couple things came to mind as I read, well until I listened to the Galaxy Song again and then it all went whizzing off into space... *lol* gotta love that song!
My thoughts went to the older men I have known who were a part of some war, my father in particular and how I have noticed that men of war have trouble living in peacetime. It is almost an afront to them ... sometimes it seems like they go about looking for trouble.
I am reminded that after I first came back from living in India for 3 years, I didn't want to accept the price at the checkout at the supermarket ... I wanted to haggle over how much I was willing to pay for my groceries ... that was over 20 years ago now, but I don't think I have ever fully adjusted : the urge to haggle is still there ... so, to advance the premise a little, do men of war, living in peace time still want to kill, dominate and work their will - fight for a cause, have a belief they are bringing order out of chaos?
So true what you say Adrian, much of the apocalyptic thinking that has dogged history, creating suffering, is caused by humans thinking about it - usually invoking some form of ethnic cleansing concept - spurned by a madman, or government - ultimately with so little to do with God and Apocalyptic [external] forces? Always makes me wonder if it isn't driven by some deep-seated Darwinian memory of the ape-within, which [we] are trying to constantly purge through such apocalyptic "revealtions." Or simply trying to prove our superiority in second guessing the way it will eventuate ... so sure it will, mind closed ... case closed ... let's all go home ... ape destroyed!
Well, those not driven by resources and wealth... perhaps Monty Python is right about intelligence ... "bugger all down here on earth!" *lol*
... well apart for a few people I know and a couple really good blogs ... like yours ...
bravo!
Lilla
Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
Thanks very much for the compliment, and for the interesting comment.
About soldiers in peacetime, and why they have trouble adapting, I suspect a lot has been said on this, so anything I'm going to write is going to be less than an amoeba's breath across the tip of the iceberg.
You might well be right that many are still in fighting mode, or are addicted to excitement. But I think there's all sorts of other reasons it's hard to adjust. For instance, there's PTSD. There's difficulties in expressing what you've been through. There's difficulties in coming to terms with it. And there's the hurdles of different values, rules, culture... For instance, in peacetime you're outside the (comforting) strict organisation and routine of the military, and the brotherhood of the squad.
And a lot of what civilians take as important might seem trivial in comparison to the main wartime concern with survival. (This is the carpe diem theme.)
Problems of readjusting to peace are something that I imagine every soldier is familiar with... I'm sure there's a strange dislocation -- eg people with leave from Afghanistan or Iraq can find themselves sleeping in a trench one day, and, 24 hours later, sitting on their TV couch at home.
About apocalyptic thinking and suffering...
I suppose by "apocalyptic thinking" I mainly meant one or both of two things. Firstly, believing that time is linear and has an ending. Secondly, believing (or worrying) that you're now living at the end times.
It's true that apocalyptic thinking, understood in these sorts of senses, has caused a lot of suffering. For instance, Hegelian philosophy, then Marxism, notoriously believed in an "end of history" or final form of political system; and many communists did believe one should hasten the process... Fundamentalist cults have been known to commit suicide in preparation for the end times...
I'd be careful, though, about blaming apocalyptic thinking in general for genocide and mass suffering. You suggest the additional motives of resources and power. And, less cynically, though (I think) more dangerously, there can also be the motivation of simply thinking you have the solution.
I don't have much comment on the ape within and whether we are trying to distance ourselves from non-human animals or our own evolutionary prehistory. Interesting suggestion, but I haven't really thought about it... Certainly it's true that, traditionally, humans have spent a lot of energy on trying to find ways to make their own species (or own race) feel special...
Comment by beholdtheman
I have few comments on the Christian understanding of apocalypse...
John Dominic Crossan, Historical Jesus scholar, argues that apocalypse (i.e. revelation) has nothing to do with the end of world in early Christian tradition. Rather, it is about the breaking in of the Kingdom of God and freedom from oppression (salvation) for the Jewish nation under Roman rule. God does not destroy the world - that would have been utterly unthinkable for Jews, rather he cleans up the world. The apocalypse brings life, not death. Jesus' revelation was different to that of prevailing Jewish tradition, as he announced that the Kingdom of God was present, not coming.
Most other Christian understandings of 'apocalypse' are Platonistic (other-worldly) and escapist. They were developed centuries after Jesus' death and Nietzsche quite rightly criticised these. They hardly resemble Jewish beliefs at the time of Jesus, which were very much 'this world'.