The Eschatology of the Left

August 18, 2005 2:43 PM

It's the end of the worldas we know it, and I feel fine... For as much as MeFites object to apocalyptic thinking, there sure is a lot of it We've had apocalyptic literature since the Second Temple period, and it heavily influenced the origins of both Christianity and Islam. It serves a strong psychological function for persecuted minorities. And more than a few predictions that have failed miserably, often based on scriptural exegesis. What does that say about modern predictions about global warming or peak oil? Do the failed predictions of Nostradamus mean that Joseph Tainter was wrong?
posted by jefgodesky (57 comments total)

And more than a few predictions that have failed miserably, often based on scriptural exegesis. What does that say about modern predictions about global warming or peak oil?

Not a whole damn lot, considering that scriptural exegesis and statistical modeling are two different prediction methods with wildly different success rates.
posted by Rothko at 2:48 PM on August 18, 2005

It's difficult to deny that environmentalism is, in many ways, the eschatology of the left. It serves the same purpose, and uses all the same tropes. The world is controlled by evil (whether corporations, pagans, or the Illuminati), but the elect (whether the faithful to Christ, or the faithful to the environment) remain as a persecuted minority. But ultimate power lies with some greater force (whether G-d or "Mother Nature") which will eventually be fed up with all that evil and destroy it. When that happens, the elect will survive, and their evil persecutors will be wiped from the earth.

It's OK to admit it. We've all thought in those terms before. Apocalyptic thought is a basic trope of our culture's thought processes, an inevitable result of our belief in linear, progressive time. It was absent in earlier cultures only because they all saw time as cyclical, where an apocalypse doesn't make any sense.

So why are the apocalyptics so wrong all the time? Well, by definition, they can only be right once ... but more importantly, nearly all those failed predictions were based on scriptural exegesis. The logical problem with apocalyptic thought is not that it's apocalyptic--it's the piss-poor quality of its evidence.

We can't help but be wary of apocalyptic claims--after all, the boy's been crying "wolf" for a long time now. But eventually, it really will be--even if it's only five billion years from now when the sun goes red giant on us.
posted by jefgodesky at 2:50 PM on August 18, 2005

Damn, Rothko beat me to it! Damn you, Rothko!!
posted by jefgodesky at 2:50 PM on August 18, 2005

Jesus -- Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium
by Bart D. Ehrman

Through a careful evaluation of the New Testament Gospels and other surviving sources, including the more recently discovered Gospels of Thomas and Peter, Ehrman proposes that Jesus can be best understood as an apocalyptic prophet, a man convinced that the world would end dramatically within his lifetime, and that a new kingdom would be created on earth--a just and peaceful kingdom ruled by a benevolent God. According to Ehrman, Jesus's belief in a coming apocalypse and his expectation of an utter reversal in the world's social organization underscores not only the radicalism of his teachings, but also sheds light on both the appeal of his message to society's outcasts and the threat he posed to the established leadership in Jerusalem.

posted by matteo at 2:56 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky: Your analogy is a little (a lot) flawed. One huge difference is that the "elect" in environmentalism die with everyone else once mother nature issues her "correction."
posted by absalom at 3:07 PM on August 18, 2005

We can't help but be wary of apocalyptic claims--after all, the boy's been crying "wolf" for a long time now

I dunno. I bet at least one dinosaur got it right.

I think the idea of an "end" to everything is certianly overstated and pretty much impossible. But an end to things "as we know them" has precident and has happened several times though out hisotory. The fall of empires. War. Massive natural disasters. These events have destroyed civilizations before.
posted by tkchrist at 3:10 PM on August 18, 2005

Well, the apocalyptics are bound to be correct, eventually.
posted by washburn at 3:14 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky: Your analogy is a little (a lot) flawed. One huge difference is that the "elect" in environmentalism die with everyone else once mother nature issues her "correction."

Not according to everyone.
posted by jefgodesky at 3:14 PM on August 18, 2005

It's difficult to deny that environmentalism is, in many ways, the eschatology of the left. It serves the same purpose, and uses all the same tropes.

It's easy to deny. You haven't offered any support for this assertion.

Environmentalism means, very simply, concern for the natural environment. There may be a subset of environmentalists who take an "apocalyptic" view of the human species, but by no means is it necessary to endorse such a view to be an environmentalist.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:21 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky, you keep trying to put scientists in the same pool as a bunch of "I think this must be so, so I'll write it down" wackos.

Global Warming is even (finally) being recognized by folks in the White House.
posted by Red58 at 3:21 PM on August 18, 2005

P.S. To me, the most potent new form of apocalyptic thinking (as opposed to the still very potent old forms) is The Singularity, or as I like to call it "the Rapture for techno-geeks".

It's a dubious idea tricked up with pseudo-scientific terminology, which at the end of the day is about as credible as Darby's theology.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:25 PM on August 18, 2005

People, it's just millenialism, a few years late, or perhaps spillover. We humans are afraid of numbers with a lot of zeros in them. I'm sure that the tail end of the 1800s had similar shrieking and beating of breasts.
posted by rzklkng at 3:26 PM on August 18, 2005

Ok, I've heard this "environmentalists are apocalyptics" argument before, and I have to say that while there may be a few Gaia freaks out there who conform to such a theory, the majority of environmentalists make rational, perfectly reasonable warnings about where our current industrial society is headed. Why is the concept of sustainability still seen as somehow controversial? It's almost tautological; if you use resources or dump pollutants at a rate greater than can be indefinitely continued, eventually you have to stop.

It should be clear to nearly anyone now that the way we are living now is in no way sustainable. Oil and other fossil fuels will get more and more scarce and expensive, and we cannot continue releasing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere at such a high and accelerating rate without increasing the greenhouse effect, and therefore, altering the climate. How severe these problems will be is up for debate, but preparing for these challenges is certainly rational behaviour. To claim otherwise is to have your head in the sand.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 3:27 PM on August 18, 2005

I'm not talking about the facts of this or that vision of the apocalypse, I'm talking about apocalyptic thought in and of itself. I tend to think the environmental/sustainability apocalyptic vision is, as you say, somewhat tautological. But a lot of us are thinking with the same tropes, patterns and archetypes as fundies. That's not bad, it's just human. It's not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be aware of.
posted by jefgodesky at 3:32 PM on August 18, 2005

Again, not even vaguely the same. Scientists measuring and then making calculations based on the rate of change is not apocolyptic thinking. Not in the same realm.

Susperstitions, fear of "000" years, and somebdoy told me stories can not be compared to science. In any way.
posted by Red58 at 3:36 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky: I think you're missing the point. We're talking about hard scientific and economic data about resource use and environmental problems, not religious or quasi-religious visions of the end of the world or human civilization.

Viewing one's own era as the End Times is a different proposition from being aware of environmental phenomena like global warming, species extinctions, ozone thinning, peak oil, etc. I think we're facing somewhat tough times ahead, but I don't think the human race is likely to die out as a result. I don't even think civilization will collapse. But there will likely be some large readjustments.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 3:38 PM on August 18, 2005

Another difference may be that the religious apocalyptic thought, hold it as inevitable, they may preach/pray for souls to be saved but the earth is screwed no matter what.
Environmentalist, by and large, act to avoid the apocalypse they warn against. But it may be an uphill battle against those who believe in inevitability.

There might be an interesting sociological point to be made contrasting the two subsets but there seems to be fairly limited traction in the comparison of the two.

And, despite the "Eschateology of the Left" title bar, I don't see all environmentalists as being "left".

Finally, as alluded to by others, "apocalypse", as used by many is an awfully personal anthropological POV. No matter how we fuck up the ecological balance on Earth, it will be fucked up mostly in how WE deal with it. Life and evolution will continue. We are not the end product of that force, only a variable, even if it results in kudzu and seagulls for awhile after we sink back down the intelligence ladder.
posted by edgeways at 3:44 PM on August 18, 2005

"The planet has been through a lot worse than us... earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet... isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!"
- George Carlin via
posted by hal9k at 3:51 PM on August 18, 2005

End of the World scenarios confer power, as do sermons on eternal damnation and warnings of impending terrorism. Politicians, policemen, and others use this power to circumvent the laws that were carefully constructed to prevent this circumvention from ever happening again.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 4:09 PM on August 18, 2005

The evidence is the difference--the statistics and models presented by scientists, versus the scriptural exegesis of fundamentalists.

But environmentalists are not scientists. Environmentalists are political activists who act on the work of scientists. Where scientists are also environmentalists, they have two roles. As scientists, they gather evidence in the form of statistics and models. As environmentalists, they are political activists who act on that evidence.

What I'm trying to raise is not the issue of how accurate the evidence is--I think that dead horse has been sufficiently beaten--but the mental models and patterns we fit that evidence into. While the average, environmentally-minded liberal may not show such signs, those who define themselves as environmentalists first and liberals second very often exhibit this mode of thinking.

Another point I'd like to raise is that this particular pattern of thought is not illogical, nor necessarily wrong. It is the evidence it fits together that determines its validity, not the pattern itself. In pointing out that environmentalists often engage in apocalyptic thought, I am in no way saying that they're wrong to do so.
posted by jefgodesky at 4:22 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky: "...environmentalism is, in many ways, theeschatology of the left. "
Of part of the left. This leftist, for example, feels that devoliping countries should get the chance to fuck up the environment at least half as much as developed nations have, without having some goddamn gringo "educating" us on ways to save the Earth.
posted by signal at 4:22 PM on August 18, 2005

I think the essential points have been covered - while this is an interesting little piece of devils advocacy or trolling, it's utter rubbish.

There are some far left wackos that have gathered on the fringes of the environmentalism movement that may have an apocalyptic view of the world, but to somehow suggest they represent the entire 'sustainability movement' is a joke.

Oh, and "we've all thought in those terms before". Er no, talk for yourself buddy.

Of course, the world is fucked. Life will go on, it'll just be a gloomy shadow of what it was.
posted by wilful at 4:30 PM on August 18, 2005

As long as we have people like this we will make it.

Although we do insist on crapping on them and going for the false heros don't we?
posted by Smedleyman at 4:38 PM on August 18, 2005

Of part of the left. This leftist, for example, feels that devoliping countries should get the chance to fuck up the environment at least half as much as developed nations have, without having some goddamn gringo "educating" us on ways to save the Earth.

Which makes it a stronger comparison still. I doubt Libertarians and other secular conservatives care much about the Rapture, either.

There are some far left wackos that have gathered on the fringes of the environmentalism movement that may have an apocalyptic view of the world, but to somehow suggest they represent the entire 'sustainability movement' is a joke.

Who said anything of the sort?

Oh, and "we've all thought in those terms before". Er no, talk for yourself buddy.

Of course, the world is fucked. Life will go on, it'll just be a gloomy shadow of what it was.

OK, so maybe not before, just immediately proceeding?
posted by jefgodesky at 4:44 PM on August 18, 2005

Does sustainability, if achieved, imply a static state? i.e. static (utopian) society? Static ecosphere?
posted by longsleeves at 5:10 PM on August 18, 2005

Dynamic equilibrium would suggest otherwise.
posted by jefgodesky at 5:28 PM on August 18, 2005

Does sustainability, if achieved, imply a static state? i.e. static (utopian) society? Static ecosphere?

No, dynamic sustainability is perfectly valid. All of the froth and bubble of human life will still continue, just within the carrying capacity limits of this biosphere.

The thing about sustainability is its inherent brutal logic. What's the word? It's not tautological, or circular or self-referential, but it's a word similar to that. We simply cannot (impossible) live beyond our means forever. Whether the adjustment is painful or cripplingly devastating (also destroying some future capacity) is the choice we have to make at this point in time. Being intelligent, forward thinking and innovative humans, we'll be fine. Won't we?
posted by wilful at 5:50 PM on August 18, 2005

The sun runs out in about 5 billion years. If we don't have interstellar travel by then, it's curtains for us.
posted by spazzm at 6:16 PM on August 18, 2005

It seems to me that jefgodesky wants to focus the discussion on an apocalyptic mindset, and how/why that is prevalent on seemingly opposite sides of the argument. I really wanted to put irony quotes around opposite and argument, as I think it simplifies the issue too much to drop each group into a black and white category, but (for the sake of sophistry) let's say jef is right, and the polarity is as described. So, the core question up for discussion is: how can the side that decries faith-based acquisition of knowledge also adopt an apocalyptic mentality?

My take goes something like this... On the one hand (let's say the right) we've got a group of people who believe that the apocalypse is imminent. Many of these people think this is a pretty good thing.

On the other hand, we have a group of people who believe the right-hand group of people seem to have an inordinately large share of the world's political power, and they're using it to help facilitate the apocalypse they believe is inevitable.

If either side is right, then the end result is apocalypse whether you believe it was the hand of God or the hand of Man.
posted by FYKshun at 6:17 PM on August 18, 2005

Apocalypse facilitators and enablers need to consider whether or not it is vanity to hope the world ends just about the time YOU'RE ready to go to the party in the sky.
posted by longsleeves at 6:35 PM on August 18, 2005

Put me in jefgodesky's camp. apocalypticism (is that right?) is just another rhetorical tool. fundies (broadly speaking) have no other tool -- not science, anyway -- and so rely on it heavily. lefties, on the other hand (again, broadly speaking, and thanks in advance for the leeway), know that the other tools at their disposal (science) aren't going to provide much traction, and so engage apocalyptic thinking the way you'd hire a street thug, justifying the move by pointing to the science. it's just meeting clamor with clamor. clamor clamor clamor. the rising water seems an oddly parallel event, disconnected, and to me this seems like the real key to the apocalypticism (still sounds wrong).
posted by Hobbacocka at 6:35 PM on August 18, 2005

I yam sked.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 6:46 PM on August 18, 2005

Trying to wrap this silliness in fancy terminology doesn't make it valid. Scientists, the ones at those notorious bastions of envornmental liberalism like NASA and NOAA, will explain the progress and FACTS of climate change. They will explain the predictable, calculable future changes (in fact changes happening today) of these events. These are not handwavers. The fact that some people can't explain it in detail yet understand that climate change is occuring do not nullify the FACTS.

And as stated previously, even those "wacky" environmentalists want to prevent and reverse the change. They are not looking forward to some nasty end to so they can prove they are holier than everyone else.
posted by Red58 at 7:37 PM on August 18, 2005

Word up to Gang Starr and Bitch Dog
posted by The Jesse Helms at 7:49 PM on August 18, 2005

2012, baby.
posted by muckster at 7:56 PM on August 18, 2005

I bet at least one dinosaur got it right.

We call 'em "birds".

/it was a mutation.

Also, you can put me in the camp of people who believe any number of apocalypses have been avoided by those who noticed they were eminent...and acted accordingly.
posted by wah at 8:08 PM on August 18, 2005

*sigh*

I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything better, but maybe I'll try one last time....

Global warming is a fact. Its expected ramifications are based on facts, as well. That's not the apocalypticism I'm talking about.

The apocalypticism begins not with the scientific data, but the story we weave around that data. We think in stories, it's the only way we can make sense of those facts. Otherwise, they're just random, useless facts. We really only have a few basic stories--archetypes--templates that all our other stories mix, match, rearrange, and turn around in ever new permutations. One of those templates is the apocalypse.

The global temperature rising by two degrees centigrade is not apocalypticism; the greed (sin) of corporations ("Babylon") despoiling the earth is. I'm not criticizing the scientific data, I'm trying to raise an interesting point about our culture. A bit of ethnography turned on ourselves, if you will.

Apocalypticism is a very common trope. It's an archetype we all use from time to time--even if only on a personal level. It's not wrong; it's an archetype, a model, a way of thinking, and nothing more. What counts is the quality of evidence that we fit into those models, and how closely that model follows reality. After all, "all models are wrong, but some are useful."

We're not superior to our political opponents. We have as much apocalyptic thinking on the left as on the right. I'm trying to highlight a common story. It's not a matter of religious rhetoric being used to bully scientific data. Scientific data all by itself is a meaningless string of numbers. It's the story, the interpretation, that makes scientific data relevant. A theory is such a story. Scientists judge their stories by how well they match reality. That doesn't make them any less stories. And that means they fit into the same tropes and archetypes as all human stories. Observing that scientific theories and religious fundamentalists share a common trope isn't saying the theory is false, or that the fundamentalist is right--it's an observation that both are humans, and think with human brains, with archetypes common to all human thought.
posted by jefgodesky at 8:11 PM on August 18, 2005

OK, so you've explained it one more time.

But it's still rejected. It's NOT a common story to those who think that the world is in some serious fucked up place when it comes to the environment. I'm an ardent environmentalist. And I'm gloomy about how well civilisation as we currently experience it is going to survive the next century. I would like to say that this view is founded on a pretty healthy understanding of the damage currenlty being done. The scientific facts, if you will. But I know it will survive and the biosphere will survive, in a diminished form.

Am I an 'apocalypticist'? I don't think so. Yet I'm more pessimistic than the majority of those who express concern about this issue.

So I think you're trying to draw a thread here, illustrate a dichotomy, that is trivial or irrelevant, being something only at the far fringes of the debate.

BTW, you have a different connotation of the word "trope" to me. Not a word I use commonly, so who's to say you're wrong, but I don't think it means exactly what you think it does.
posted by wilful at 8:29 PM on August 18, 2005

But it's still rejected. It's NOT a common story to those who think that the world is in some serious fucked up place when it comes to the environment. I'm an ardent environmentalist. And I'm gloomy about how well civilisation as we currently experience it is going to survive the next century. I would like to say that this view is founded on a pretty healthy understanding of the damage currenlty being done. The scientific facts, if you will. But I know it will survive and the biosphere will survive, in a diminished form.

No one understands the world through facts. At best, we understand the world through very solid stories that are full of very good facts.

Would you portray the damage being done to the environment as "bad"? Would you attribute that damage to the greed (whether for money, power, or anything else) of corporations, governments or other such groups? Would you speak of such greed with the same air that someone else might speak of "sin"? If you've never done any of those things, then you're innocent of all apocalyptic thought.

The facts are meaningless without the story. We don't act until we've put those facts into some kind of context. The environmental facts mean nothing unless we decide that what's happening is "bad" and "should" be stopped. Those are value judgments--they have nothing to do with facts.

And there's nothing wrong with that! It's what it means to be human!

Let me put it this way: What's wrong with apocalyptic thinking?
posted by jefgodesky at 8:48 PM on August 18, 2005

What's wrong with apocalyptic thinking?

It's overkill. It's a rhetorical inefficiency signalling some prior failure of communication. It's a motivational device, which wouldn't be needed if climate data could be absorbed and responded to on a strictly apolitical basis. It's a glaring example of what's silliest about humanity, at a time when silliness is least called for.
posted by Hobbacocka at 8:59 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky, sorry, but your line of thinking is quite a bit off. You need to familiarize yourself with the modern environmentalism movement before casting such off-base generalities. First, the majority of enviromentalists do not believe in the "Gaia hypothesis" and have no concept of "Mother nature." Second, enviromentalists do not oppose "evil" as some generalized, pure force--they target generalized attitudes and world views of real human beings. Lastly, in the enviromentalist "apocalyptic scenario" nobody survives. Life ends. So no, I'd have to say your construction is completely off base. Modern enviromentalism is much more like a political ideology than any sort of religious mythology and except for superficial similarities they have little to do with one another.
posted by nixerman at 9:25 PM on August 18, 2005

Actually, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with your entire conception of apocalyptic thinking. It's so broad that, as wilful noted, it's pretty much meaningless. The way you talk of enviromentalism one could also throw Marxism, anti-globalization, Democrats, Republicans, gold investors, peak oil supporters ... and pretty much anything under the same umbrella. Personally, I've always suspected the real goal of the Apocalypse fantasy has nothing to do with understanding the, as in this, world. It's nothing more than the completion of the form for the general world-rejection that underlies most religion. This is essentially different from political ideologies which do not reject the world but rather seek to dominate it. Equating say Marxism and the Book of Revelations as the same sort of "apocalyptic thinking" is a pretty damn big stretch.

And, gah, scientists do not tell stories. What the hell does this statement even mean? Scientific theories, (most of which come in the form of mathematical equations!), exist only to model and predict data. How the hell is E=mc^2 a story?
posted by nixerman at 9:40 PM on August 18, 2005

jefgodesky, on my reading of the above thread, it looks like your point basically amounts to saying "apocalyptic thinking is common!" Well, sure. Magical thinking is also common. Belief in a big-bearded man in the sky is also common. Lots of thought patterns are common, both adaptive and maladaptive. So what? Why is this interesting or surprising? Unless you're saying that environmentalists are driven to their positions by some deep-seated need to believe in an apocalypse (which you seem to indicate you're not), your argument basically boils down to "scientists are human too! Some of them might also believe in apocalypses!"

What are we supposed to do with this blinding flash of insight? Is it revealing to observe that most people have worried at some point about the possibility of a nuclear winter or another world war or a lethal viral epidemic? Most people have also at various points thought about how human lifespans are extending, how cures for many cancers are rapidly emerging, how technology improves society, and even (gasp) how wonderful life will be when the messiah returns and creates a state of heaven on earth. You could just have easily have created a post saying "sometimes people are optimists!". (Not that it would have been any more insightful.)
posted by heavy water at 9:53 PM on August 18, 2005

Apocalyptic thinking is based on vanity, the desperate need to believe that your life, your time in the world, is special, unique, the end of all times and therefore your actions are incredibly momentous and will have far reaching consequences.
Us post-Copernicans don't think we're in any special place or time, so we don't think in apocalyptic terms. It's just life, you know?
posted by signal at 10:33 PM on August 18, 2005

Let me put it this way: What's wrong with apocalyptic thinking?

Other than the fact that it's shortsighted, vain and religious in origin? How about totally wrongheaded?

How about the fact it gives people a blank check to write against future generations? "Oh, well. I guess it won't matter much in a few years, because the world is going to end anyway. Sorry grandkids. And even if it doesn't, I'll be dead so I won't have to worry about it."

Likewise, that eschatological thinking directly inhibits active, dynamic and real long term planning? How far does the industrialized world really think ahead? 10 years? 20? 30?

When do we get to start thinking in 10,000 or 100,000 year terms? Can we at least start at 100 to 1,000 years?

When can we start thinking about and planning for truly long term and actually large problems? How about safe and effective long term nuclear and hazardous waste containment and management? How to collectively survive an ice age? How to collectively divert an impending catastrophic comet or asteroid strike? Not if, but when?

If we weren't so damn obsessed with and afraid of the apocalypse and elaborate fairy stories, maybe we could actually solve some of the very real but realitively small problems collectively facing us, like excessive scarcity in some places and overbearing surplus in other places - be it scarcity or excess of food, fuel, shelter, or information.

On preview: Signal beat me to it.
posted by loquacious at 10:45 PM on August 18, 2005

"Everybody gotta die sometime, Red."

~Sgt. Barnes; Platoon
posted by bwg at 10:54 PM on August 18, 2005

I now understand where jefgodesky is coming from. I suspected when he kept using the terms "trope" and "archetype" and my suspicions were confirmed by his insistence that people can only understand stories, and not facts.

I think jefgodesky has yet to accept the limited usefulness of literary analysis outside of literature itself. He thinks he has made a profound discovery in his deconstruction of environmentalism, and trumps it up in the boldest language he can muster, but after a lot of noise, he's forced to accept that all he has said is that both apocalyptic believers and environmental activists both think like humans.

Jefgodesky, I think you fundamentally misunderstand science. You can't just equate climate research or petroleum geology with the Book of Revelation. They share only trivial similarities, and calling them tropes and archetypes only serves to obscure the triviality of your insight.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 12:32 AM on August 19, 2005

Actually, I understand science quite well. Including how it is often swayed by cultural influences. How did the Piltdown Man hoax last so long? It was an astounding lack of curiosity born of the fact that the hoax told scientists what they wanted to hear, what they expected. I suspect that similar cultural influences lie behind our general lack of research into population and food suply, as Hopfenberg and Pimentel argued in a 2001 paper [PDF].

The admirable part of science is not that it is free of cultural influences, but that it's self-correcting. Evolution is not a single, observable data point, it's a theory. I'm not saying that in the usual sense of "it's not true," I'm quite convinced it is true--I'm saying that in the sense that evolution is, essentially, a story we use to understand data. Without evolution, we just have a big pile of bones. Evolution puts those bones into a context. It puts them into a narrative. Only then can we understand what those bones mean. Measuring a femur is a fact. Saying how it fits into human evolution, that's a story.

The kinds of stories we weave are much influenced by our culture. Darwin's idea was one of slow, gradual change--influenced by Lyell's geological uniformitarianism. Now punctuated equilibrium is trying to correct that error. Creationists and other unscientific types try to exploit that self-correcting process of science to say science is wrong. I'm glorifying it to say that science is more reliable than most ways of knowing because of it.

My main point here was trying to undermine our smug sense of superiority over religious types, and to point out that people are people and think as such. There's a world of difference in the quality of evidence between peak oil and the book of Revelations, but I read a lot of peak oil blogs, and I read a lot of Christian end-times propoganda--and sometimes it's hard to keep straight which is which. They both talk the same way. I'm fairly sure peak oil is going to wreak havoc with us over the next decade; and I'm pretty sure that Jesus will not be coming to conquer the world with plagues and such. The evidence is a totally seperate issue from the way people frame the issue, and the way they discuss the implications of their evidence.
posted by jefgodesky at 5:13 AM on August 19, 2005

Repent Sinners - The End is Near!
posted by caddis at 6:36 AM on August 19, 2005

Trope trope trope trope trope, trope trope trope trope trope trope trope trope Trope trope. Trope trope, trope trope trope; trope trope trope trope trope trope.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 6:41 AM on August 19, 2005

Why is 'literary analysis' outside of literary studies a poor tool?

Quite a few psychologists hold that narrative is what helps us to understand our place in the world. Dreams, myths, fairytales, fiction all are tools that can be used to understand both conscious and unconscious content. Or if not understand unconscious content, then at the very least it allows to live in accord with unconscious content, which many hold, leads to a more fulfilling and rich life.

So analysing the narrative content of human experience (the stories we tell each other) can help us understand ourselves and others.
posted by lyam at 7:25 AM on August 19, 2005

Oops, not necessarily a poor tool, but 'limited in usefulness outside of literary studies'.
posted by lyam at 8:03 AM on August 19, 2005

"Let me put it this way: What's wrong with apocalyptic thinking?"

loquacious, I agree with your assessment and I'd like to add that people who believe (a) the world is going to end in their lifetime and (b) they are the "chosen people" (of whatever stripe) can excuse in their minds all sorts of truly evil, heinous and barbaric behavior towards the rest of humanity - in the name of "saving" us all.

Similarly, thinking that the world is going to end soon can make people very lazy - why bother to try to do anything interesting in your life if it's all going to be destroyed anyway? It's almost a "comforting depression" - sort of "whew! I don't have to try hard to change my life or contribute something meaningful and world-changing to humanity, because we're all gonna be dead soon! That's great, now I can just couch-potato, get fat and watch TV all day, my life-path is laid out for me."

And that's what I think is really wrong with apocalyptic thought.
posted by zoogleplex at 10:36 AM on August 19, 2005

Man, I miss the days of peak whale oil and the coming horse dung catastrophe.
posted by darukaru at 11:16 AM on August 19, 2005

"Rapture of the Techno-geeks" sounds stupid. Its called "Rapture of the Nerds."

A technological singularity might happen, and sorta has happened, in some sence or another. But it won't look like you expect, and Kurzweil won't live forever. Nanotech has lots of potential to do interesting things and all, but the "cornocopia machine" represents a fundemental misunderstanding of the stomach (chemical reactor).

I'd expect a technological signularity to be more culture & information technology cyntric, with real world technology developing very quickly, but not blindingly fast. So we should be thinking more in terms of:

1) Maximizing the precentage of the worlds population involved in intellectual endeavors, i.e. China, India, etc. develop, the west figures out how to kill off most all non R&D jobs, etc.

2) Eliminating "managment", i.e. open source, wikimedia, corperations using "open/wiki databases" to eliminate personel and managment, etc.

No nanofactories, but lots of "open source" contributions to any product before it hits the market. So the real enemy is the power corperations gain by restricting their databases, development, etc., i.e. its a political problem we don't know how to solve yet, but we have ideas.

As for raw technology, yes it'll do absolutely incredible things, but if you give a guy a monopoly on a specific type of stomach (ractor), chnaces are your nanobots won't be able to simulate it.

Can technology create the political changes described above? Just maybe, you could make people smarter with genetic enhancments and implants, until the right way to do things is more obvious to more people. But that won't happen soon enough for Kurzweil to live forever. :)
posted by jeffburdges at 11:28 AM on August 19, 2005

"Let me put it this way: What's wrong with apocalyptic thinking?"

I have to agree with much of the above as well as longsleeves who said: “Apocalypse facilitators and enablers need to consider whether or not it is vanity to hope the world ends just about the time YOU'RE ready to go to the party in the sky.”
We need a better mythos/story because the one we have now is based upon vanity that NOW is the time and WE are the chosen people who - blah blah blah. When in fact we should see ourselves as a link in a human chain extending into infinity. We then are not then the reapers of the final reward, but the custodians of the future of man.
Which is how we should think anyway. We live what 70 years give or take? Compared to the tens or hundreds of thousands of years of man behind us and the untold aeons in front of us?
We don’t need an apocalypse to justify our lives. We can work and live without grandiose schemes knowing that simply working for future generations ensures and validates our lives.
Without the future of man, life, consciousness, etc, what the hell does anything matter? Consider the difference in knowing the world will end tomorrow vs. knowing you will die tomorrow.
If you die, there will still be Shakespeare, Einstein, etc. If the world dies, they die with you.
One can posit an afterlife where all this is ‘recorded’ somehow, but eternal unchanging joy seems equal to stagnation to me. Hell as well obviously.
And if there isn’t some ultimate accountablity why then not simply indulge in pure hedonism?
Certainly truth and moral acts generate their own happiness, but in the face of the apocalypse tomorrow there are no long term rewards. Indeed even one’s identity is erased, since there would be no record of one’s acts.
/even if there is, who cares what the superintelligent ant hive mind thinks of you, you’re dead anyway.
And certainly no retribution - of any earthly kind.
It’s clear that the apocalypse is something to be struggled against. In that sense there is nothing wrong with apocalyptic thinking. It defines what happens if our struggle is unsuccessful and is justifiably as horrible as it sounds. Being devoured by Kali is joy by comparison (and as I understand it is the point of that).
Kali-worship takes into account that cycle of birth and death. There are myriad stories, not all of them judeo-christian.
Apocalypticism is likely a more prevelent theme because people seem to like to scare the kids into acting right. Grimm’s early tales, etc. Those ‘Fairy Stories’ weren’t Disney-fied when they were first told.
I disagree that scientists don’t tell stories. ‘How’ is not ‘why’, but we all ask why. I’d also assert (contrary to the more literal minded engineer types here) that stories are what we use to apprehend reality. Feel free to insert ‘mind-symbol interface’ etc. etc. (the capacity to classify experiences, and to encode and communicate them symbolically) for ‘story’. This is one of the methods we use to apprehend reality. In some ways this subject touches on cognitive anthropology.
Consider the difference between adopting and understanding a new language vs. adopting and understanding a new religeon from a cultural perspective. Typically the latter is frowned on culturally, because of the connections to concepts (story, how one communicates the symbols).
If this sense of ourselves was not important, there would not be examples of indigenous cultures losing their sense of purpose when more advanced civilizations show up.
But again, there is more to it than the judeo-christian (+Islamic) view.
http://sivasakti.com/articles/tantra/dasha-maha-vidya-art80.html
posted by Smedleyman at 12:04 PM on August 19, 2005

Huh huh huh "Tainter" huh huh huh.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:36 PM on August 19, 2005