The Apocalypse Notes

• Why are we still writing about the apocalypse? – Main question of the class.
  • The Apocalypse Today
    • “In the Lord’s Hands’: America’s Apocalyptic Mindset”
    • Religious to secular shift
    • Politics / Environment / Zombies / Aliens
    • Comment on interesting passages
    • Discussion papers are informal – can use the pronoun I – is preferable
• What does the Apocalypse mean?
• Why are humans obsessed with stories about all humans dying?

Big question: What exactly does the apocalypse mean?

• Meaning shifts as ideas become part of popular discourse.
• Do only religious apocalypses end with a better world?
• Apocalypses tend to use “us-vs-them” vilifying one group for the betterment of one group.
• Apocalypse vs. Genocide
  • Apocalypse – includes violence and often genocide to usher in a new, better world (ultimate end goal is positive, ends justify the means). The world is irrevocably changed. Dichotomic attitudes and “final battle” narratives.
  • Genocide – mass murder, not necessarily to ultimately change the world or end violence, many can be considered a kind of apocalypse. The end goal is smaller scale, typically to a single region and single targeted group, often the world is not permanently affected. Hate motivated.
• Secular Apocalypse:
  • Climate Change
  • AI
  • Political Coups
  • Genocides
• Apocalyptic violence is perpetrated by apocalyptic thinking and mindsets, from the religious to the political. The way of viewing the world that violence and death is the only way to get the world you wish to see; get them before they get you. Tied to paranoia. 
• The war on terror is a type of apocalyptic thinking according to Lifton. Vicious cycles of violence, and unsuccessful apocalypses. Some thoughts: not true apocalyptic mindset in Bush’s war, but a mimicry, with violence for improvement, but as it was a response it was more human nature and politics than actual apocalyptic thinking, not grand enough. Politics to religion isn’t the way apocalypse happen, religion to politics is. The religious aspect cannot be retroactive.
• Sequence of events leading to an apocalyptic events.
• Religion is the fuel to the  fire.
• Combinations of religion and politics.
• Faith in higher power combining with alleviation of doubt, full confidence in ideals, refusal to attempt or accept defeat/wrong leads to apocalyptic thinking.
• Apocalyptic thinkers try to draw others into their ways of thinking – a good way to had people believe in your views.
• Apocalyptic mindsets work in politics to create black-and-white, with-us-or-against-us scenarios where there aren’t shades of meaning or opinions but a situation where you are with the popular belief or one of the ones to be harmed from it. Self-preservation and fear leads to control and a situation where the apocalyptic thinking gets out of hand and grows bigger than its leaders can effectively control or rationalize. – This is how cults can form.
• Personal apocalypse confused for actual apocalypse. “I hurt, so I want others to hurt.”
• Apocalypse in modern America:
  • War on terror conflagrated with religion and “evil”, justification of war , reactionary to violence.
  • Bush, Trump’s “with or against us” attitudes, etc.
  • Cults
  • Environmental collapse, internment etc.
  • Death, poverty, natural disaster
  • Within and outside our borders
  • Immigration battles
  • Conflagrating small groups of individuals for their entire people/culture/religion/etc.
• What is evil and how to you fight it? Who chooses? What happens when those leading you against evil become the “evil” themselves.
  • “Those who seek power are the least suited towards it.”
• How do you define evil?
  • Evil is what you make it.

Rich People Doomsday Prep

• A form of rich man’s arrogance, to be a leader 
• A selfish fantasy, to be a leader/1% even in post-apocalyptic scenarios
• A new fashion for those with too easy lives, a way of showing off wealth
• Escapist fantasies
• Sub-conscious awareness of being the reason/contributor to causes of possible doomsdays in modern day
• The apocalypse itself isn’t a source of hope, prep is
• Fear of the 99%
• New Zealand
• Ordinary people and intelligent elites both believe in the apocalypse, though in different ways
• Extreme ideology – religion vs capitalism (which can be seen almost as its own kind of religion)
• Survival of the fittest / richest – those who have more vs those who work more – who owns/survives the apocalypse? Who reaps the rewards? On whose backs is it built? Is it the same apocalypse viewed from different angles rather than different views or versions of the apocalypse?
• Power – political vs financial
• “Those who crave power are the least suited to it”
• Human impulses to destroy / take / everyone for themselves
• Hope for the best, assume the worst
• If you’re scared, you’re getting what coming to you – the wicked and the worthy
• Marginalized people – nothing to lose, the rich – preservation of luxury
• Searching for a better world vs thinking the world cannot get better
• Reckoning / karma
• What is necessary?
• Two Threads:
  • What is the level of belief the rich really hold in the doomsday? Is it a fashion/fun/luxury?
  • Means to an end, a fantasy to fulfill an ego to be a leader even in the apocalypse?
  • Is there something irresponsible about these rich people using money to protect themselves in the apocalypse rather than staving off that which they fear.
• Lifton mentions that ordinary people can believe in the apocalypse, and apocalyptic thinking can bleed into politics, in situations like political coups, which can change the status quo for the better. Osnos mentions the rich elite, who typically benefit from the status quo, would fear this type of apocalypse, which directly affects them and is more easily believed than a grand religious one. It is the same type of apocalypse, viewed from different vantage points of what they stand to lose or gain.
• Apocalyptic believers aren’t necessarily psychotic or paranoid
• Flee to New Zealand – Fight or Flight response?
• Fanatics of the apocalypse and religious zealots – fight response
• The super rich – flight response
• Business thinking can bleed into the non-business world
• Cut your losses – Rich americans jumping ship for New Zealand
• The rich are creating the disaster they wish to avoid
• “When society loses a healthy founding myth it descends into chaos” page 2 of Osnos
  • Healthy/Misleading founding myth – The American Dream – Land of Opportunity
  • When that myth collapses? Rich get richer; poor get poorer.
• Growth of economic and societal gaps
• Lifton page 62 “universal impulse to spiritual death, to find larger meaning in the continuity of life”
• Apocalypse Movies:
  • Knowing
  • Rapture Palooza
  • Ragnarok
• Apocalypse Narrative structures in fiction
  • Examples
    • Harry Potter
    • Star Wars
    • Carrie / Stephen King
• Dispatches from the Ruins – Frank Bures (Video)
  • Aeon.co
  • The rider of the apocalypse is all of us
  • Its always here, not coming
  • Too aware that we could stop it – but don’t know how
  • Individuals cannot stop what is in motion – makers of our own destruction
  • Futility and fragility
  • Lack of control vs loss of control
    • Asteroid vs societal collapse
  • Comfort in the apocalyptic fiction
    • Glorification
    • Self-fulfilling
  • Systems upon which we are dependent and each of us individually know little about

Jewish Apocalypse

• Presented as more calming / comforting / less violent
• Motivated by political persuasion
• Pre vs post-millennialism
  • Difference in violence levels
• Cosmos, Chaos and the end to come
• Origins of the biblical apocalypse
  • Mostly influences the western world / largest influence
• The Book of Daniel
• The Book of Revelation
• Cohn was a historian
  • Typical academic approach to religion
  • Religious Studies vs Theologism
• Theologism is scholarly approach of religion by someone of that faith
• When/Where/Why was the book written vs is it true
• Timeline of events:
  • BCE (Before Common Era)
  • 1st
  • 2nd
    • Bulk of the writing of the book of daniel
    • Large portions are written as if they were written in the 6th century BCE (400 years earlier) – written as prophetic of the jewish persecution
  • 3rd
    • Persecution of the Jews by Antiochus
    • Start of the writing of the Book of Daniel
• Views of the bible
  • Atheist – Moral lesson but fictional
  • Loosely Christian – Belief that it is true but not literal, its allegorical
  • Evangelical – Literally true document
• Where did this book originate?
  • People need a sense of hope
• Pseudepigrapha
  • Books of the bible written as if written centuries earlier
• Political motivation but religious in other ways
• Texts like this require nuance
• Political motivation combined with honest belief
• It’s not a simplistic forgery

The Book of Revelations

• No claimed writer of The Book of Revelations
• Difference of Judaism and Christianity and Islam
  • The Three Abrahamic Religions

• Main difference between Judaism and Christianity is Jesus as the messiah
• Christianity evolved from Judaism
• Jesus was Jewish
• Christian Jews is a term that makes sense during this fuzzy time period
• Old Testament = Torah
• The Book of Revelation was written during the time that Christianity was emerging from Judaism but wasn’t really established
• Only the sinners need fear the apocalypse – how does that tie into Lifton and Osnos? Hope vs fear. The guilt of the 1%.
• False authorship – Apostle John
• Painting the roman empire as a satanic force
• Criticism of certain churches
  • Jesus promises punishments and gifts
• Difficulty keeping everyone on the same page
• Encouragement of separating the religious practices
  • Implicit threat to the jewish that jesus is the messiah and they would not be favored/saved in the next coming of the messiah
• Numerical specificity
  • Doubt vs confidence

Understanding the Apocalypse

• Alison McQueen
• First chapter of a book
• Rehashes Cohn
• Good chapter to emulate
  • Not a lot of fat to cut away
• Lucidity
• Religious roots of the apocalypse
  • Cannot be separated from political context
• Politics and religion in apocalyptic thinking
• Not only a literary genre but an Imaginary
• Otherworldly apocalypse
• An Imaginary
  • Thinking understanding structure
  • A metaphor or allegory
  • Ideas and visions
  • Shared with society
  • Myth / Legend
  • A collective lens through which you understand a concept/image
• Culture/society gives you that lens
• The apocalypse is self-aggrandizing
• “On a horizontal level, both books bring narrative coherence to history.”
• Past, present, future tied together
• History is SSDD – same shit different day 
• narrative coherence = meaning
• Making the world make sense
• Shared and contextual
• Things change over time
• Exists at a more or less subconscious level
• Flexible, migrable, and unstable
• Armageddon – where the end of world takes place
•  Why does the number 7 keep popping up?

Wojcik chapter 1

• Approaching Doomsday
• Metacommentary – providing interpretive guidance to the reader
  • “Breaking the fourth wall”
  • Use of the pronoun I
• Folk apocalypse = informal versions of the apocalypse concept
• Folk religion – the privatization/personalization of religion, less socially constructed
• Informal, non-institutionalized
• Heretic = person condemned by religion p.15
• Is the secular apocalypse meaningless?

Bias

• Unbalanced argument
• Omission of information to favor your argument
• Bias doesn’t = taking a stance
• Bias means that the way the stance is taken is problematic 
  • Flaw in logic
• Premillennialism vs postmillennialism
• Christian fundamentalism –
  • School of thought, early 20th century
  • Christians have gotten away from the fundamentals of the religion, and have changed the religion too much to adapt to the modern world and the urge get back to the traditional basics.
  • Evangelicals are very similar if not the same as christian fundamentalists
  • Tend to be right/far right
  • Extremely devote
• C and E Christians
  • Christmas and Easter church attendance only/mostly
• Dispensationalism
  • Closely associated with fundamentalism
  • Human history unfolds in chunks of time each planned out by god
• Premillennialism vs postmillennialism
  • When will christ return
  • The millenium referred to is the 1000 years between the first and second/last defeat of satan. 1000 years of joy and perfection, society by god’s grace and rules.
  • Postmillennialism – christ comes after the 1000 years
    • Progress
    • Humans become gradually more christian and liberal
    • Improve society themselves
    • Humans can make the world better until it is good enough for Christ to return
    • Humans have to save themselves before christ comes
    • Socially and politically liberal christians
  • Premillennialism – christ returns before the 1000 years, to initiate it
    • Moral decline (p.34/35)
    • Humanity as inherently evil
    • The sinful world can only be improved by supernatural intervention and the aid of Christ
    • The antichrist will rise before christ comes as a savior
    • Humanity needs saving
    • Typically evangelical christians
  • Difference mainly comes from interpretations of chapter 20 of the book of revelations
  • The US has a unique apocalypse legacy but why are we as a nation so fascinated?
• Stipulating definitions
  • “Here’s how I’m defining this ambiguous terms for the context of my paper”
• Passive vs active beliefs in the apocalypse
  • Passive
    • Viewing signs and omens / interpreting them
    • Telling the future
  • Active
    • “Magic practices”
    • Humans actively changing course towards or away the apocalypse
    • Causing the future
• ICBM
  • Intercontinental Ballistic Missile
    • Deliver thermonuclear warheads
• Contributes to the modern apocalypse
• Hal Lindsey and Apocalyptic Belief
  • Contradicts himself sometimes
  • The Rapture
    • Didn’t invent these ideas but popularized them
  • Predestination and fate 
    • The Adjustment Bureau
    • Team Free Will
    • If something bad happens: it’s fate not my fault
    • If something good happens: It’s my own efforts
      • You can effect the ultimate fate of your own soul but not the fate of the world
• Free will is sort of all or nothing
• Propaganda way of thinking
  • Hoop earrings and rock’n’roll as signs of the apocalypse
• Is he writing for belief or for fame?
• The apocalypse: God’s will only or a deeper reason
• Pope Francis is the 5th pope since the opening of the 3rd secret of fatima – fiery apocalypse should happen under his tenure.
• Conspiracy theories of the catholic church
• Chapter 4 – The Bayside Phenomenon
  • Catholic prophecies and theories
  • Modern biblical prophecy
  • Immorality of soviet Russia from the mouth of Mary
  • Did Lueken believe she saw the virgin mary?
    • The sincerity question
  • Marian apparitions
  • Traditionalist catholics
    • Rejection of vatican 2
• Vatican 2 – 1960s conference
• Modernizing catholicism
• Da Vinci Code / Angels and Demons
• Murphy’s Law
  • Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong
• When Prophecy Fails and Faith Persists: A Theoretical Overview
  • Author: Lorne L. Dawson
• To some extent, the larger the group in question, the better. The loss of some members and the continued dissent of others can be borne more effectively by a larger group. But in the end it does not seem to be so much the size as the solidarity or cohesiveness of the group that really matters. To some extent it is the sheer amount of intra-group social interaction that makes the difference.
  • Pg. 71
• religious believers, especially in the modern world, are apt to encounter a great deal of information that is inconsistent with their religious convictions. These people and their religious leaders must cope with this dissonance on a daily basis.
  • Pg. 76
• Proselytize – converting others to a religion
•  Dawson is a social scientist not a religious scholar
  • Typology
• Proselytization is part of reaffirmation
  • Stupidity loves company
  • Defense mechanism
  • Validation of belief
  • If one person believes their crazy, 30 its a cult, a million its a religion
  • People don’t like being wrong
    • Find the lady – already invested, won’t stop even if their losing
  • Retroactive belief to justify past behavior
  • The resilience displayed by religious groups in the face of prophetic failures suggests, as several commentators have argued, that the level of dissonance experienced by insiders is less than that imagined by outsiders, particularly social scientific researchers with their greater personal and professional commitment to logical consistency
    • Pg. 77
  • “Humans are rational animals” – aristotle
    • But it doesn’t come easily
  • Distance decay
  • In group polarization
  • Charisma only matters in a social setting
  • Cults put strains on social ties
  • New religious movements generally look like cults
  • Molding beliefs to belong
    • Political
    • How involved is someone in the group?
    • Present in every group.
  • Failure of prophecy – fracture into sub-groups
• Wojcik describes the secular apocalypse as “meaningless”
• Narratives of apocalypses in fiction: music, literature, movies
  • The Last Man, Dr. Strangelove, REM, Left Behind series, The Leftovers, Knowing, Rapture Palooza, etc.
  • Separates the secular apocalypse from the religious apocalypse.
  • Pop culture and humor vs organized religion as a spreading factor
• People make jokes about things that make them uncomfortable / coping mechanism
• Religion sets the narrative for you – unquestioned
• Secular apocalypse – changes with times
  • Set of behaviors and possibilities
  • Create order from the chaos
• Religious Apocalypse – > meaningful
  • Rebirth / afterlife / god’s plans
  • Possibility of salvation
• Secular Apocalypse – > meaningless
  • No afterlife
  • No end of evil / suffering
  • No salvation
  • Survivalist? – Is it effective or only a coping mechanism?
    • Search for WASP society / end of “minorities” / ethnic cleansing
• Does this dichotomy work? – Wojcik’s perspective
• There is more overlap between the two than expected.
• Nihilistic fatalism
• The Twilight Zone – Time Enough
• Loose christian beliefs? Salvation without the end times?
• Nuclear apocalypse is set in a religious frame
• Punk culture – pessimistic, nihilistic, absurdist – Secular apocalypse

Imagining Apocalypse by Taylor

• Taylor presents a less delineated separation between the secular and religious apocalypse than does Wojcik
• Deism – the idea that god started the universe but does not interfere with the universe anymore / end of divine intervention
  • Complicates the separation of religious and secular apocalypse
  • God set up the world – predetermined religious apocalypse
  • God steps away from humanity – the apocalypse is caused by humans / secular apocalypse
  • Deists more likely to believe in a self-sustaining universe / not believe in the religious apocalypse
    • Deism still carries over distinctly christian ideas
• Deism is a spectrum of beliefs
• If the universe was created by god, the universe is ordered and rational
• Humans have given themselves power only god is meant to have: ultimate destruction
  • Tower of Babel
• Humans cannot create like god can, only destroy
• The role of religion is complicated
• Why is religion part of this essay – maybe this essay would have been better without the religion?
• Circular way of seeing the religious apocalypse and secular apocalypse.
• Human apocalypse tends to be speciesism
• Advocate to a return to religious traditions for how to deal with nuclear weapons and power
• There is no divine power that is going to save us from ourselves (deistic / atheistic)
• Satanic theory about the Monster Energy Drink logo
• What does the religious apocalypse mean?
  • First – define religion
    • The presence of god as mandatory is problematic for some arguments (atheism, aliens, buddhism)
  • God’s divine plan for humanity
    • Rebirth and salvation for humanity
    • Final banishing of evil / satan’s influence on humanity
  • Belief/faith in higher power and its role over humanity
  • Not human caused
  • Humanities role differs in religious views, but the apocalypse is lead by god.
  • Meaningful sacrifice / ultimate purpose
  • Most religious apocalypses have a narrative structure they follow / a myth 
  • Human accelerated not human caused
  • Will always come to pass
  • Narrative distinguishes the structure from secular apocalypse
  • Provides moral compass / consequence for actions on earth
  • Religious apocalypses – includes all religion (god or higher/non-human power, predetermined fate of souls vs  being able to earn your soul’s salvation (pre vs post millenilest christian) )
  • The alien hypothetical – can look like a religious narrative – superhuman power to save humans from themselves, alien interference with humanities course
  • Sense of morality
  • Degree of belief in what cannot be tangibly seen – not necessarily spiritual, inevitability of the belief (past the point of no return vs certain from the start of human history)
    • Inevitable from the start of human history: religious apocalypse
    • At one point evadible even if now we are past the point of no return: secular apocalypse

Meaning of the religious apocalypse:

• Humanity’s fate is in god’s hands, with faith of the banishment of evil and salvation for those who deserve it, typically through rebirth.
• The religious apocalypse is predetermined by divine forces to purify the world from sin and evil. Through being faithful and following doctrine, people can attempt to save themselves.
• Everyone gets whats coming to them – good or bad.
• Ultimate goal of a religion: creation of an idyllic reality/society
• Book of revelation – verse 7

Wojcik chapter 7

• Gog – “nation of the north”
  • Russia
• Cold War and its apocalyptic (failed) narrative
• Failed apocalypse strengthens apocalyptic belief paradoxically
• Who is being considered the antichrist at a given moment in history?
• Concept of a new world order
• How pessimist apocalypse believers are?
• Is peace a false peace?
• Is technology going to take over humanity?
• End of cold war theoretically should decrease impeding apocalyptic thought
• No matter what is going on, it is related back to coming apocalypse
• Fluidity with which certain preachers can change their message
• Relate to the Dawson article
• Defense mechanisms
  • False senses of security
• Group mentality persists even as the looming threat dissipates
  • America first  mentality
• Democracy vs communists
• America vs russia
• Christians vs “godless communists”
  • How to christian russians think of this?
• Strict dichotomy
  • Us vs them
  • Good vs evil
• Wrong =/ stupid
• Upper echelons of religion are sincere in their messages – not malicious in their manipulation
• Anyone who tries to organize the world for you into black and white neat boxes is someone you should run away from
• Over-simplification can be attractive to understanding the world
• “The world is a mess, and I just…need to rule it.” – Dr. Horrible
• Sword verse
• Cherry picked verses from religion that justify doing horrible things to somebody else
• What was the prevalence of christian orthodoxy in the USSR?
• Russian’s do not embrace the identity as Gog
• Every group paints themselves as the “good guys”
  • Winners write the history books
  • Every villain is a hero in his own mind
• Wojcik p.159 Hunt’s Quote
  • All human attempts at peace are doomed
• Why is “new world order” / international unity seem as a sign of apocalypse?

Chapter 8 – Modern UFO era

• Extraterrestrial pop culture and apocalyptic belief
• You see what you think you see, not what you actually see
• Attention-seeking behavior
• Fear of nuclear destruction
• Folk religions that believe in aliens
• 1940s onwards
• Want to be a part of something bigger than they are – a major theme of apocalyptic belief
• Group mentalities
• The why of the belief is the focus, not the what
• Modernity / novelty to the belief of UFOs
• Comics/mutants/superpowers in the apocalypse – Jeffery Crybolt
• Are aliens outdated?
• Remember, this book was written in 1997
• Today’s fear: AI and robot uprising
• Changing image of aliens – evil vs savior/benevolent
  • Close Encounters of the fourth kind
  • “Serve Man” short story – 1950
    • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Serve_Man
    • Twilight Zone Episode
• Caution against seeing the aliens as angels (which is a belief in the 50s)
• Star Trek: Who Mourns Adonis?
  • Religious figures as aliens
  • Aliens in place of god in religious apocalyptic narratives
• Thor in Marvel comics as an alien
• 1960s influence
  • Space race
  • Pop culture expands towards space:
    • Star trek
    • Doctor Who
    • Not all aliens are benevolent, but some are
  • 1890
    • HG Wells
    • War of the Worlds
    • Panic that the radio reading was true news – immediate apocalyptic thought
• Non-religious argument: aliens appear due to reaction not prophecy
• Dividing line: Do aliens qualify as divine figures?
  • “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?
• Abduction vs rapture
• Abductees/contactees with the role of prophets
• Theodicy
  • the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.
  • A solution to the problem of evil
  • As defined by Alvin Plantinga, theodicyis the “answer to the question of why God permits evil”. Theodicyis defined as a theological construct that attempts to vindicate God in response to the evidential problem of evil that mitigates against the existence of an omnipotent and omnibenevolent deity.
• Wojcik – p. 56, 91, 193, 202
• God is viewed as:
  • Omniscient – all knowing
  • Omnipotent – all powerful
  • Omnibenevolent – all good
• If god is all these things, you’d expect evil to not exist in the world.
• During this stage Hick also developed his Irenaeus “soul-making” theodicy in which he argued that Godallows eviland suffering in the world in order to develop humans into virtuous creatures capable of following his will.
• How can God exist and the world still imperfect/the problem of evil?
  • The free-will defense
    • Evil and suffering comes from the actions of humans not God
  • The big picture defenses
    • A moment looks evil but will be ultimately good from God’s perspective
• Apocalyptic world views are functionally similar to theodicy
  • Attempted solutions to the problem of evil
  • Luken, Wojcik p.91
• Is modern apocalyptic thought taken a turn?
• Has become more and more pessimistic
  • Y2K
  • 2012
  • TRUMP
  • Brexit
  • Climate change
  • AI
• Wojcik thinks we are moving towards cataclysmic forewarning
  • Less fatalistic
• Technology aids secular apocalypse more than religious apocalypses
• Increased exposure increases apathy 
• Treat the religious apocalypse the way the syllabus defines the religious apocalypse
  • Use of religious language
  • Secular apocalypse can be framed religiously but are secular in other contexts
• Secular: The ability to not choose religion not the absence of religion
• Secular apocalypse is one in which the religious narratives are not chosen as the lens, not one in which they are inapplicable.
• Rise of Individualism
• Secularism gives discourse to what the apocalypse is and means
• There are no societies in which there is no religion whatsoever
• Religion as a societal choice
  • Increased freedoms
  • Divarication of people’s beliefs leads to ability to question necessity of religion
  • Increased scientific knowledge / the enlightenment
  • Globalization of beliefs and cultures
• Modern ability see the universe without any inherent meaning, moral or motive/order
  • Amoral not immoral
• No external source of value, direction, or purpose
  • Existential angst
• Natural human urge to find a meaning for the meaningless apocalypse
• Apocalypse demands religion
  • Transcendent moral order not necessarily organized religion
  • Some force which holds the universe together not necessarily controlling it
  • Traces of religion remembered give meaning
• The Atlantic – A world without people
• Back to the Garden: New Visions of Posthuman Futures Author(s): Mark S. Jendrysik
  • Alan Weisman’s The World without Us (2007), the National Geographic Channel’s Aftermath: Population Zero (2008), the History Channel’s Life after People (2008 and 2010), and Animal Planet’s The Future Is Wild (2002), Silent Running, Soylent Green, Wall-E, The Matrix
• Martyrdom – the world is better off without humans
• Separate justice from faith
• How power to change the environment, makes us powerless against stopping the destruction we wrought
• In the religious and the secular
  • Fundamental duality between good people and bad people
  • Reckoning of the bad people, the good get to make their own world
• Ecological narratives: all of humanity is evil
• We speak about nature as if it is distinct from us
• Punishment for putting humanity above the natural world
• Does it count as a utopia if no one can recognize it as a utopia?
• Can humans ever be divorced from nature if they are dependent on it? It is an illusion?
• Do we romanticize nature?
• Utopia has intelligential and moral aspects nonhumans cannot appreciate
• Concept of utopia evolves with time period
• Utopia = good place
  • Eu = good
  • Ou = no
  • Etymological meaning = no place (nonexistent)
• Humans affect extinction rates

Conspiracy Theories

• A New World Order
• Ability to survive and adapt
• Require no proof, impossible to debunk
• New World Order Conspiracies I
• The New World Order and the Illuminati
• Nature and identity of the antichrist
• Be prepared just in case these theories are true
  • No harm in believing if they aren’t?
• Ex. Freemasons
• Ex. National Treasure, Dan Brown
• Anyone who objects to a conspiracy either
  • Has been tricked by it
  • Or, is a part of it
• Abusing any small piece of evidence
• Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?
• It’s not about salvation, it is about understanding the world and negative/evil events
  • Theodicy
• Deep state
• 2012 (movie trailer as ex.)
  • Another example: Knowing
• Relationship between conspiracy theories and the apocalypse – because they don’t always overlap
  • Cross-fertilization of the mindsets
• Do all conspiracies have to challenge authority?
• When evidence contradicts theory, it is disenchanting and oft ignored.
• Conspiracy comes before stigmatized knowledge
• Stigmatized knowledge is about conspiracy
• Self-confirming circular logic
• What benefit do the believers get for their belief?
• False flag – a dramatic event or attack presented to cover up a different agenda

Apocalyptic Short Stories

• We can get them wholesale for you
• When we went to see the end of the world
• To serve man
• Geraci – Apocalyptic AI: Religion and the Promise of Artificial Intelligence
• Journal of the American Academy of Religion, March 2008, Vol. 76, No. 1, pp. 138–166 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfm101
• Futurists and transhumanism
• If good vs evil is not the only form of which exists apocalyptic dualism, is Geraci arguing that man vs other (in this case machine) is only form of apocalyptic dualism, which would take a similar narrative structure? Fundamentally, is a a strive to improve – either in a religious/moral sense or technological sense – which mandates or causes the downfall of humanity? Is that the defining factor, rather than good vs evil?
• The purified world at the end of the apocalypse is better without humanity
• Religion – meaning comes from god
• AI – humans are the gods, we create AI, we build “their” new/better world
• With robots – what are the distinctions between good and evil
  • Is it determined by the creator?
• Are they still human? Are they something else?
• If AI aren’t human, can their world be meaningful?
• Does this apocalyptic vision solve the problem of evil?
• Anthropocentric
• Eliminate humanity you eliminate evil
• Progress for the sake of progress, the end result isn’t the important factor
• Terminator – end humanity for the sake of humanity
• Goal: End of evil / a perfectly logical society 
• Compare to ecological apocalypse
• Star trek – a private little war

We can get them wholesale for you and When we went to see the end of the world

• Humorous renditions
• Tedium of the buildup of the apocalypse
• Apocalypse is always coming but never here
• Humor is a coping mechanism
• How do we become desensitized?
  • Mass death
  • One death is more impactful than hundreds
• Disillusionment, what can we sell?
• https://allpoetry.com/The-Hollow-Men
  • This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper
• The Doors – The End
• Cognitive dissonance