Apocalypse Not
If you're reading this, then the latest predicted end of the world, like all the others before it, has come and gone. Admit it, you're a little disappointed, aren't you?
What is it that's so attractive about end-of-world predictions, anyway? And what is it that's supposedly so horrible about the prospect of the end of the world?
We're all going to die.
I'm sorry to be the one to bring you this bad news, but statistical evidence is that the human mortality rate is 100%. So, why do we panic when we hear we're going to die in the company of everyone else?
The post-WWII "boomers" were raised with the specter of total nuclear war hanging over our heads at all times. I think much of the free-wheeling sixties, and most of the excesses and bad behavior of the boomers since then, has been a reaction to that fact of our up-bringing. One can face the total destruction of the world only so long before one develops a sort of devil-may-care attitude about finishing one's homework. It's only a step or two beyond that into drugs, beads, long hair, fringed leather vests, and sexual excess. So I'm told.
And, once it appeared that the balloon would not go up, and the hammer would not drop (yet another apocalyptic forecast gone wrong), my generation, now burdened with the habits and results of a decade or two of debauchery, understandably turned instead to the sweet succor of grossly overpaid Wall Street jobs, rampant and extravagant consumption, and the accumulation of planches.
Because, what it is about the end of the world that is somehow more chilling and horrifying than simply dieing is this: Everyone Goes With You.
Our biological imperative is to reproduce, and to see to it that our progeny are to be well cared for, to carry on our genes. Once that is accomplished, although there is still a certain reluctance to die, at least we can slip away knowing that the world will go on without us. However badly we may have screwed up, the world will go on without us. However grand and important we may think our life has been, the world will go on without us.
But, in the apocalypse, Everyone Goes With You. And, for those of you who subscribe to the idea of nuclear winter and who enjoy reading Cormac McCarthy, perhaps Every Living Thing Goes With You.
Wow. That's literally a buzz kill.
Each of us is reconciled to being a screw-up in his own right, but I think we all take solace to some degree from knowing that the world is resilient enough to, well ... go on without us. But if we have screwed it up so badly that we not only kill ourselves, we not only kill everyone else at the same time, but we also kill all the birdies, flowers, bunnies, whales, worms, nematodes, and plankton at the same time, well that's likely to appear on our permanent record.
And for believers, it's no comfort to know that we ourselves haven't brought on this destruction, but it is that God has judged us, found us wanting, and visited this terrible fate upon us in despair of us ever getting it figured out. It's still the end of everything we know and love.
Well, except not, actually. For believers, as usual, there's always a secret trap door for the select few. In exchange for their adherence, they will be saved from the apocalypse. But still, while they're joyous for themselves, it must bring at least a twinge that everyone and everything else has to walk the plank.
So it is that, about once a decade, we greet some new lame-brain prediction of the end of the world with bated breath and rapt attention. "Maybe this time, it's really the one!" "They seem so sure of themselves!" "The way everything else is going to hell in a handbasket, they're probably right this time!"
And, I'm afraid, to a certain degree, very privately, we think: "Cool. I wonder what it's going to be like?"
I remember watching films of atomic bomb tests when I was kid. They were as common on TV as ads for Pepsodent. I think we all have burned into our minds from childhood the images of that giant flare, that ball of fire, that mushrooming cloud with the streamers from instrumented rockets, the power of the blast sucking up battleships from the ocean, shock waves nearly demolishing whole towns, then the sucking back-draft finishing the job.
Admit it: We love it. We are drawn to it. We know that, finally, we have achieved at least one God-like power ... the power to destroy life as we know it! If you don't believe me, look back at the face of Dick Cheney when he was Secretary of Defense.
The thrill of the Apocalyptic Prediction is the thrill of a cosmic game of chicken: who's going to chicken out first this time? God or Man?
posted by Mique @ 11:46 AM
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