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Apocalyptic thinking is a basic feature of human nature.

Discussion in 'Off-topic Discussion' started by TheWigglesSentToSpace, Aug 21, 2021.

  1. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

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    I find it interesting that most generations think to some extent that the world is coming to an end that they are the last generation and that they need to prepare. Usually this kind of thinking is associated with religion where people like the Millerites, for example, thought the world was coming to an end sold all their possession and waited for Jesus on a hill only to be disappointed. This kind of thought isn't unique to Christianity though. In medieval china the White Lotus society believed that Maitreya was coming and that the new age was about to begin and they started the Red Turban movement that overthrew the Mongols and initiated the Ming Dynasty. And in the 1870s in the United States Native Americans who witnessed their lands and their livelihoods stolen from them began to dance the Ghost Dance which they believed would blow away all the white people frome their lands.

    Because apocalyptic thinking has traditionally been associated with religion many believe that it is a uniquely religious phenomenon. But what I find interesting is that today we live in a culture that in many ways is very secular, and we have secular apocalyptic movements too. For my parents generation it was nuclear holocaust. For my generation it is global climate change disaster. And let's not forget the 2012 Mayan calendar ending phenomenon. All these movements look(ed) with grim despair at the future and said: surely humanity cannot survive much longer.

    I think this bring up an interesting questions. Since apocalyptic thinking shows up regardless of whether you are religious or not, is it then a basic human trait, part of human nature, to be frightened of the future?
     
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  2. gordie

    gordie Fapstronaut

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    I actually agree with this but I'm going to be pedantic/ philological on the word apocalyptic: apocalypse means revealing, and has "reordering" connotations-- it actually doesn't mean end of the world. I think doomsday thinking comes natural to human beings in society, but in Christianity I would like to note that the book "Revelations" describes a reordering and a recreation (it ends with God reordering the world with the righteous).

    I think definitive "ending" thinking is inherently flawed, or at least it's not pragmatic for ordering a society. A better way of viewing it is that in the future there will be destruction, and you have to bolster yourself and tie yourself to something that will survive the reordering/ destruciton.
     
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  3. TheWigglesSentToSpace

    TheWigglesSentToSpace Fapstronaut

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    Fair enough. I think this is a case of semantic shift- the process by which one word acquires a new meaning and loses it's original one. I think it started in Western culture where the word apocalypse was used to refer to the second coming of Jesus and the reordering or revelation of a heavenly kingdom on earth. But because the second coming of Jesus was also the end of time and the end of the world the two became associated. Gradually the word lost its original meaning and became more associated with the end of the world than a reordering or revolution.

    No I agree. This kind of thinking definitely does not lend itself to good government. If you think the world will end soon you don't care about what's going on right now. That's maybe why in America where apocalyptic thinking is popular (religious as well as secular) there is a lot of skepticism about global climate change- or at least an unwillingness to do anything about it. If the world is going to end soon and Jesus is coming to take you to heaven, why bother?

    I'm not trying to disparage such thinking I'm just saying that like all ideas- such as capitalism, communism, consumerism, neoglobalism, etc to name some secular examples- it can have some dangerous consequences. I agree it's better to think of cycles of destruction and renewal- and to extend that the idea that destruction creates new growth and new opportunity, like how dead leaves and dead plants nurture the future generations of plants and trees in the forest.
     
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  4. gordie

    gordie Fapstronaut

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    I think both Revelations the book and the word apocalypse are just a lot more interesting in the lens of apostolic Christianity, the actual meaning of the word, and the book of Revelations itself. That was why I brought it up. Chicken Littleism has always seemed to me like a scare tactic.
     
  5. gordie

    gordie Fapstronaut

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    Also one more usage that isn't covered that I really like: apocalyptic and be used to describe a time and situation of great chaos and disorder, but you have to separate this from the idea that it is to a completely bad end. A book like Gravity's Rainbow, that is very chimerical, chaotic, surreal (in the surrealist tradition-- blending two unlike things into a singular, much like a Magritte painting)-- a book I would argue is very detailed in its description of the world, but in which everything is upside-down, disordered-- is "apocalyptic."

    A Carnival is itself almost a controlled apocalypse. There was a tradition where a donkey would be dressed as a clergy-member in medieval carnivals for the day, and sometimes they would dress slaves as kings.

    I think apocalyptic thinking has gripped America because it is a very pagan belief, and when it isn't rightly ordered in a more sophisticated form of spirituality it will return in a form that seems very real and terrifying. Hence, why Evangelicals and leftists both are so terrified and certain of their crude conceptions of the soon-approaching end-- or, as you mentioned, the fear experienced during the Cold War.
     
  6. gordie

    gordie Fapstronaut

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  7. well the world's gotta end sometime so the chance that today's apocalyptic thinkers are right is greater than 0
     

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