And what do you have to say on people saying this is the apocalypse?
People are saying that? Quick! Someone check the ruins at Megiddo for any signs of a supernatural battle!
I have been feeling like something’s about to be unleashed. I’ve been repeating the words “the center cannot hold” a lot. The summer has been full of storms, as if the earth is cracking right open. There have been far too many flashes of something. Far too many hot flashes. Too many incidents that feel like catalysts. Something in the air feels like mystic electricity, and like … I don’t know, it’s hard to say, but I trust my instincts enough. Plus, Susan Miller said shit was about to go down, and who am I to disagree with Susan Miller, lol?
I’m not a huge expert on apocalypses, but ever since I had a conversation with a friend last summer, apocalypses have been on my mind. In the “purest” sense of the word, apocalypse means uncovering –– and this is me speaking through the mouth of Heidegger here –– but it’s an unveiling, or a disclosure of sorts … sort of the apparition of something that makes itself known to us as truth (don’t ask me what I mean by truth, I’ll collapse in a heap.) So, in my estimation, the apocalypse has already happened. And will keep happening. The fact that the book of Revelation has been translated (and I’m not a religious scholar, I don’t read Greek, I barely know Hebrew –– so a lot of this is going to be my take from my vantage point) as REVELATION, as something that is revealed to us (not a discovery, or a mastery, as something that we react to because we’ve missed what was under the surface until it bubbled right up) is rather telling. I have a particularly weird definition of “world” right now … and when someone tells me “it’s the end of the world”, I think more about the end of systems that are familiar and comprehensible to us. Think of world here more like a posture, or a style … something that makes sense. If someone told me that it’d be the end of the earth, thennnn I’d start to freak out (even though with the environmental degradation, I’m afraid that may happen.)
Another strain in apocalypse thought that I am vaguely familiar with, is the idea of a total break. It’s a clean break. We can’t even fathom what the world is going to look like after this clean break, because any and all systems that we are familiar with will be washed away.
I’ve always liked that in Norse & Greek mythology that the concept of Ragnarok (basically the Norse apocalypse) and the Twilight of the Olympians still has a cyclical bent to it. Like, the world restarts …. I like this notion because not even our idols survive. Gods, who are supposed to be all powerful, still fall. It’s a very interesting metaphor if you map it onto changes in social organization, politics, thought, etc. That these things that are supposed to be ABOVE the scope of human affairs, despite frequently interfering in human affairs, can die just like humans do … that everything has a shelf life.
I have been feeling like the world is going to end. And I am afraid. I am also somewhat joyful, because I feel like how the world ends could really go either way –– it could be these series of cataclysmic wars, disasters, etc. …or, it could be the dissolving of all artificial boundaries that prevent us from having a more realized engagement with the world. I think that it could be where we do go back into the past (not like in the Renaissance where it was partially collector-mania, partially intellect mapping itself onto political superiority) because we need to retreat inwards, so that we can act wisely outwardly. The parallel I’m thinking about here are those “solar hero journeys”, wherein one goes to the Underworld, and ascends again with wisdom, or one gains humility. I think that there’s a lot in the world that requires a second look. I also think that we are going to have to REALLY look at difference, others, boundaries, temporality, etc. in a a way that respects that
a) we can’t fully assume an understanding of others, or assume the being of others.
b) that being in a world with others is NOT a competition, it’s more like a strife that we’re locked into … strife relating more closely to striving, wherein despite these tensions,we are somehow made all the better for them?
c) that we live in ways that assume that
- we’re going to die, and the world is going to continue on without us. So like, we won’t always be around to fix our mistakes, and that our decisions have afterlives of their own. Which adds a considerable weight to our actions, methinks.
- because of the fact that we are so entangled with everything around us, our decisions will have effects which we cannot even feel.
d) that we can never ever control force. That we can never have eternal mastery, even a complete understanding of things … that perhaps, we need to embrace “force”, or “fashion” (aka bringing an action into the world, and those who sustain it for a time) as something that does have these moments/movements … I’m thinking more about symphonies than I am about Hegel here.
None of that is particularly original, and it’s basically me riffing on Weil, Glissant, Levinas, Heidegger, etc. But I think because I’m meditating in such a state of emergency, I feel like a lot of the things that I experience with my gutbrainheart could be of some use. Partially because if you believe that “truth” emanates from “The Good” (eh.), or that truth is beauty (ehhhh?), or that the apparition of beauty makes a hospitable place for a lightning flash of truth (getting warmer…), then it’s hard for me not to believe that there’s something to the way all my thoughts are congealing together, because they feel more beautiful than anything else.
Civilizations have fallen before, for similar reasons. It’s absolutely asinine to think that we could somehow avoid the same fate, without doing the necessary work. It’s similarly stupid to say that all of human history led us to this point. Well, it did, but like –– I feel somewhat squicky about believing that we are the logical inheritors of the universe. That somehow feels wrong.
I think that if we are living in the apocalypse, it is because we are becoming aware of how deeply fucked up things are. And I think, we’re waking up from an anaesthetic … hopefully collectively, but I always tend to forget that flaming eejits exist. I think that even the people who once benefitted from systems are getting a taste of just how toxic those systems are … and I’m hoping that their response is not one of hatred, but of a desire to mobilize and change things. So yeah, our world is going to end. Hopefully something more fully realized can take its place?
In any case, I’m hoarding water.
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