The End of the End of the World

Despite the unusually high level of public retardation on the subject, I’m looking forward to the year 2012. Once that year dawns without incident—like the year 2000 before it—the final hard date for the apocalypse will have passed.

There is this kind of loosely organized society of secular doomsday nuts floating around, and 2012 is pretty much their last chance.  When it becomes clear that the end of the world is not coming imminently, when that final box on the calendar for possible doomsdays is marked off, will we finally be done with this cultural derangement?  Perhaps they will simply resign themselves to watching the calendar with bated breath, hoping for one of the considerably more vague Abrahamic prophecies to pan out.

I consider it partly an outgrowth of the unfulfilled Armageddon promises of the Cold War. Some took the threat of nuclear war as a warning; the end of the world was supposed to fill people with a sense of alarm. Some, however, seem to have taken it as a promise. Rather than “We have these terrible weapons and must not use them!” they heard “We have these terrible weapons and using them is inevitable!”

When the Soviet Union disintegrated and the specter of large scale nuclear war disintegrated with it, a lot of death fantasies went unfulfilled. There still remains this little nugget of apocalyptic mania in the American psyche.

Still, one shouldn’t mistake the doomsday fascination for a recent phenomenon. Human beings have been predicting the End of All Things for as long as there have been human beings. In fact, cultures that produce apocalyptic literature tend to be going through rough times. The first Judeo-Christian apocalyptic literature was produced by the Hebrews during one of their many periods of enslavement.

“The world is crap,” the doomsayer says, “and it won’t get any better. The only way things could improve is if the world just ended and everybody died.” This attitude was echoed by Christianity during their own period of repression, and enshrined in the book of Revelation: a highly symbolic critique of the Roman Empire.

This is worth contrasting with Norse mythology, which has Ragnarok. At Ragnarok the Aesir (representing order) will fight the giants (representing chaos) in a battle that will kill most of them and destroy the world. A big part of Norse mythology is the inevitability of this: Thor will be killed by Jörmungandr, Odin will be eaten by Fenrir, and Surtr will burn Yggdrasil with a flaming sword. Everyone—even the mythological figures themselves—know that this will happen. They don’t lament the end, or celebrate it as a time when their oppressors will be destroyed; they embrace it as destiny.

This all harkens back to a simple fact, something that every human being understands on a primal level: the world is ending—not by prophecy, not by divine mandate, not by destiny—by fact.

The universe is a closed system. There is no energy coming into it from outside. What is currently here is all that exists and all that ever will exist. As light inevitably turns to heat, and the heat inevitably dissipates, the universe inevitably turns cold and dark. The universe is, in fact, dying slowly all around us. Very slowly. So slowly that none of us will be around to see it end—and then not in a bang, or even a much of a whimper. The end really will come, as the Christians say, “like a thief in the night.” A very, very long night.

For some people this physical fact of entropy isn’t good enough. I admit that it isn’t very dramatic (though it does possess a certain romantic resonance). Cities bursting into flame and continents sinking into the sea make for a much more satisfying mass-death fantasy.

This points to a deep cultural depression. Our age is one of social desolation. Progress is empty and mechanical, and science is no longer considered a source of joy, but of existential horror. I fear that we are all sick of living, but are too cowardly to just kill ourselves. We hope for some cosmic circumstance—some runaway bus of prophecy—to come and mow us down instead.

“It is fated,” we can say.

“SIGH.”

This thanatotic impulse constitutes a great challenge for our species. To overcome it, to discover the joy of life in an age of wonders, may prove an essential step in the long-term survival of our species. Rather than regarding existence as a burden successful sapients must treat it as a challenge—an opportunity to assert collective will against the impersonal forces of the universe and, rather than succumbing to ennui and despair, prevailing and taking reality by the throat. Intelligent life is the universe’s only hope for escaping the inevitable cosmic night.

Don’t sit around dreading/hoping that the universe will drop a rock on your head and free you from the burden of sentience. Grow, learn and do anything you can to make the world a better place. The human race deserves to survive, and so do you.