Popalyptic VI: Choose Your Own Apocalyptic Adventure

"To be human we need to experience the end of the world. We need to lose the world, to lose a world, and to discover that there is more than one world and that the world isn't what we think it is. Without that, we know nothing about the mortality and immortality we carry. We don't know we're alive as long as we haven't encountered death: these are banalities that have been erased. And it is an act of grace...loss brings as it takes away."
-Helen Cixous, Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing, p. 10

Adding to the last post, with the helpful thoughts coming from Helen Cixous above, I add a fifth thesis, which is that every person and culture needs some sort of belief concerning how it will all end. This will help lead us into today's post.

Part of the current issue in America is that there are competing eschatologies, with a lot of crossover between different camps. Nobody really knows what or how they believe, and there are a plurality of religious and secular options, many of which are mixed and mingled in a similar fashion as our creation narratives are mashed together.

One apocalyptic message I have been noticing tells us that things are coming to a cataclysmic end. This story is full of fascinating characters, strange events that are both natural and seemingly too fantastic for nature as we know it. There are truly ancient apocalyptic touches to these modern apocalypses, but with one large difference: human beings are in control of how things will end, or even if they will end. This takes us into some fictional worlds.

One of the worst movies I ever had the misfortune of seeing ends up being a good example of this: Armageddon. The name alone is meant to conjure images from Revelation. But it is a modern-day Americanized version. Yes there is the cosmic rock cruising towards earth, which seems very apocalyptic. But then things turn in a different way. With the help of technology and a lot of determination, a group of Americans (of course) are able to stop Armageddon and save the earth. Armageddon, in other words, is avoidable. And all it takes is us and our own strength and ingenuity.

The story lines of movies/books such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Mad Max (all of them), and I am Legend are similar (though some are much better than others). We determine how or if things will end. For these storylines, though, the end comes. But not completely. There is a remnant left (we will wait for a later post to discuss the rapture and Mr. Lahaye) who have to survive in conditions that cause some to resort to animal-like behavior and others, like the father in The Road, to choose to be the "good guys."

Of course, we cannot end without also noting Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, as well as Ken Kesey's Sailor Song, which Kesey literally described as "post-apocalyptic" in an interview. This apocalyptic story-line, which I assume you are familiar with, tells us that the world is ending and we are causing it to do so. If we clean-up our act, perhaps we can still be saved. If not, many will die, and the world could revert in a Mad Max, The Road sort of way. Again, this is a story in which we are in control.

I bring up this variety hoping, beyond anything else, that they will bring out themes and ideas as to what sort of eschatology America is moving into and to decide if any of these stories can be referred to as modern-day apocalyptic literature. If so, our new version really does have very little to do with God and a lot more to do with ourselves. Although they differ as to how and when and if things will end, in all of these it is always about our strength, understanding, and technological powers. Seems very Modern, now that I think about it. I suppose all of this is leading us to the next post where we'll have to see what Tim Lahaye has to say about all of this. Oh boy.

Thoughts? Other titles? Disagreements? Is anybody reading these?

Peace,
Matt