Is it me, or is discussion around “The End” on the up and up? Over on Reddit, the once blithe, posh artsy, post-news aggregators have formed communities called Collapse - focused on the end of the civilized world, and Preppers - those preparing for major world disasters. Others in this vein are drawing followings, like Dark Mountain, and Countdown to the Kingdom. Secular, religious, spiritual, or otherwise, two questions prevail: when will the present age end, and what should we do about it?
Little wonder we all might be asking these questions; a virus fractured the foundations of our modern existence. Some of us, though, ask these questions with particular earnest, even optimism. Those few of us aren’t exactly sentimental over the erstwhile “precedented times”. I count myself among them. The “normal” that so many are urging us to return to seems anything but: a life not worth living devoted to foodporn, selfie-destination travel, hashtag activism, top-pop-hit refrains mumble-rapping “I just don’t care”, disruptive business ventures, and key markets of envy and folly.
After long enough, it doesn’t suffice to live indifferently to the inconsistent values of the surrounding world.
This is a turn of tides for me. For all my life, The End was a joke. All I knew of "the end of civilization, mankind, and Earth as we know it” I heard from the megaphones of sandwich-board-donned evangelicals. Near my hometown, there is a regularly stocked periodical ironically titled “The End Times” which covered current events, and connected them to prophesies of downfall. My amusement was a refusal to consider, or see, anything.
I discredited prophesies summarily. I chalked it up to something I called the Nostradamus Effect. If you prophesy enough things using appropriately vague but specific language, others will post hoc identify specific events that coincide with the words. Most famously, Nostradamus wrote that “two steel birds will fall from the sky on the Metropolis” which many took as an irrefutable prediction of the American 9/11 terrorist attacks. However Nostradamus’ quatrains comprise over 4,000 stanzas of unfulfilled work: so what of the other visions? The same kind of thing happens with false palm readers who venture ideas, and whittle down truths as they read your facial reactions like a poker player gaining an upperhand. In that same vein, I recall Dr. Feynman’s very illustrative example of conditioning on an event after it has been observed:
You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight... I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance that I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing!
Two decades ago, as a secular, young environmentalist, my idea of endtimes was that of a slow burn, a drawn out environmental disaster. This is a popular secular prediction. In his book Collapse, anthropologist Jared Diamond discusses Captain Cook’s discovery of Easter Island. Littered were the remnants of a once great Pacific empire, reduced to a few dozen people who had lost any spoken language and resorted to cannibalism. Diamond argues that isolation and limited resources were a sped up simulation of the inevitable downfall that looms over all the human race if trends continue. Our whole planet Earth is the proverbial island and we, the tribe. The disastrous process fueled by unbounded greed and exponential technology versus linear repletion of resources is called Tragedy of the Commons. It’s not prophesy, though, it’s game theory and we are all playing a losing strategy.
Regarding endtimes, there are many points of either side, the environmentalist and the prophet, to which the other can nod in agreement.
But enter the neo-liberal mindset. Since neither doomsdayer could have his way, the frame of thought that rose to prominence was one of social cooperation, permissiveness, open global markets, winner-take-all economics, and an ensuing race to the bottom. With this new market, one assumption became critically necessary for success: the world will not end. Indeed, we are told that, in order to earn income after retirement, we must invest in the market, as if the market is guaranteed to grow indefinitely, and without bounds, and that currency is guaranteed to be the only means of supplying tangible support.
The idea that the world or present age can’t end is a philosophical Pandora’s box. It almost immediately implies unfettered hedonism. Everything is exchangeable because for whatever’s wasted, the world can always supply another. While true and regrettable that electronics, homes, cars, etc. are built with planned obsolescence, the salient issue is that ultimately people and their livelihoods are subject to the same exchangeability. Abortion is just such an example, some parents even directly justify the act as exchanging the pregnancy they are given in hopes that the next better fits their wants. Exchangeability also leads to crushing economic policies, outsourcing poverty, fostering a near-slavery working class in South America, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. Exchangeability tells you that there’s no problem concentrating poverty elsewhere to maximize benefits and payouts. Exchangeability is a dispensation to kick a can down the road and call it meaningful change. We are flat out with mass harvest, mass exploitation, and mass extinction, furrowing like an ironclad into dangerous terrain with uncapricious optimism in its sails.
Something has got to give.
As a recent convert to Christianity, I am now keenly aware of how hard it is to defend the eschatology in the Bible. Maybe you are too. Ask why it has to be defended. There is an armament, a military readiness, against some of the precepts; that this age will end, that people may be judged for their actions or inactions, and for belief or lack of belief. In retrospect, I respect the guts of a person who dons the sandwich board and shouts into a megaphone; it was basically Jonah’s job in Nineveh. A rationalist cannot be objectively moved by statements like “There will be a great shaking” because it’s precisely, only Faith that gives such a statement meaning.
You might not brandish sandwich board and megaphone externally, but do so internally, in your heart. Prompt these discussions and observe. Speak seriously about these topics and there will be cringe. We might even view the armament against eschatology as one of the fruits of the neoliberal mindset. I even sense the battle within myself reading on these topics. However, I’ve finally arrived at an understanding of this with which I’m at peace:
It’s instructive for us to prepare for the end. If you have Faith, you see the wisdom of St. Paul’s exhortation to live “in the flesh but not according to the flesh”, to have our "loins girt”, and to store up treasure in heaven rather than on Earth. Anything can change at a moment’s notice, but unless the lesson here penetrate your deepest corridors, it’s just platitudes and meaningless. I think our greatest chance of not just improving our disaster readiness, but of eschewing systems that destroy our humanity, and of living in better peace and accord is to connect with one another. We all conceive of the haunting image of a destroyed world. Then ask: what do we do with that? How can we transform this image of destruction into a battleplan for divine day-to-day living? Read this way, the Bible becomes an SAS field guide.
I think we all know something great is coming. We all agree we will not know what or when. I suggest that, regardless of our personal survival, the best thing is to commit to living and dying for peace at all costs. That is the beautiful example you get from Jesus and from the Saints.
Happy Lenting.
Very sharp piece. I know what you mean about defending the eschatology. The temptation is always to meet the liberal worlview halfway. No one listens to sandwich board guy, after all. But like you say, they didn't listen to Isiah either. Or Christ ...