Monday, July 2, 2007

Apocalypse Pretty Soon


I have to admit there have been certain days when I prayed for the end of days. Most likely, it was because my head was throbbing or I was broken hearted or I was filled with corporate-work ennui. But I never really wanted the world to end, and certainly didn’t put an exact date on it. But through the centuries, religious groups have predicted the end of the world. In an article about the newest version of the apocalypse comes this paragraph:

Light and darkness—heavenly forces and a corrupted earth—are the twin engines of apocalyptic movements. For Christians awaiting rapture or Shiites counting the days until the Twelfth Imam appears, the trials and injustices of the known world are a prelude for the paradise that we can imagine but can’t yet achieve. Judging by the sheer number of predicted end dates that have come and gone without the trumpets blowing and angels rushing in, we are a people impatient to see our world redeemed through catastrophe—and we are always wrong.

Yup, always wrong. Such hubris, to think that one can know when the earth will flutter out. We might not make it, but the earth will be around. But insecurity is so strong that folks have to believe in it

…according to Paul S. Boyer, an authority on prophecy belief in American culture and an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the apocalypse is an appealing idea because it promises salvation to a select group—all of whom share secret knowledge—and a world redeemed and delivered from evil. “The Utopian dream is a big part of the Western tradition,” Boyer told me, “both the religious and secular forms. But the wicked have to be destroyed and evil has to be overcome for the era of righteousness to dawn.”

This reminds me of clubs that little kids make in which they exclude a gender just to feel special. And of course it’s not just the religious. New Agers have their own religion, but their myths and icons are all too similar:

“The post-2012 world will be a world of universal telepathy,” Arguelles wrote me recently from New Zealand, where he has gone to prepare for the transition. Since 1993, when he claims to have received a new prophecy in Hawaii, he has been calling himself Valum Votan, Closer of the Cycle. “We’ll be literally living in a new time,” Arguelles said, “by a 13-month, 28-day synchronometer that will facilitate our telepathy by keeping us in harmony with everything all the time. There will be a lot fewer of us, with simple lifestyles, solar technology, garden culture and lots of telepathic communication.” As for the many who “have not evolved spiritually enough to know that there are other dimensions of reality,” Arguelles predicts they will be taken away in “silver ships.”

Not interested in telepathic gardening? Oh well, get on the silver ship—destination unknown. Hard to believe that people buy into this, but then again, people buy into Jesus rising from the dead and Moses parting the Red Sea. According to the Mayaist (They believe the Mayans predicted the end of days), the end is either 2011 or 2012. Being that the idea of heaven bores me, and the New Ager idea of telepathic gardeners is even duller, I’ll go to hell on the silver ship.

What amazes me is the amount of work people put into this. They study ancient cultures and write books and even change their names, all in a quest that will end in disappointment once the end date passes to the next day. The sun will set and the sun will rise. I’ve seen this elsewhere. At a hippy reggae festival I had a pleasant woman at a booth try and convince me that the World Trade Center destruction was caused by controlled demolition. There were books and videos and here she was manning this booth, spending her free time and energy on this pointless mission. I tried to be polite, but I had to ask, isn’t more important to work against the right-wing demagoguery in this country rather then silly, paranoid conspiracy theories. But I misunderstood the powerful human emotion to fantasize rather than deal with cold, dull truth. Oh well, while you are on the mountain top waiting for the rapture, I’ll be in the bar, telling jokes.

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