Does humanity have a deep seated need for apocalypse?

Great Debates
1

Does humanity have a deep seated need for apocalypse? If so, why?

I was watching a show on the History Channel earlier about how the Mayan calender supposedly predicts the destruction of the world in 2012…and how a number of other oracles (supposedly from all over the world and throughout time) ALSO predict the earths destruction around that time. I was mostly just watching the show for laughs, as it was the standard wide eyed BS about how ‘accurate’ all these supposed oracles are, blah blah blah. I thought it funny that they had some folks from the fringes of the Global Warming crowd chiming in about how this meshes so well with current ‘science’ on where the earth is headed (there was also some fairly amusing stuff on ‘pole shift’ where supposedly the continents are going to some how shift about on their side…or maybe its the magnetic field…or perhaps both, it was hard to follow).

Anyway, what struck me was how many peoples throughout time have predicted the end of the world…and how many SHOWS about these kinds of predictions I’ve seen on TV in the last month as I’ve been laid up at home after surgery. There have been shows on TV purporting that we will all be wiped out by: Giant asteroids hitting the earth, super volcanoes/super earth quakes, the afore mentioned vague oracles predictions (some from Cayce and Nostradamus, as well as oracles in Rome and Greece…and the ever popular book of Revelations of course), black holes, super cosmic radiation strikes from stars going supernova, the always popular Global Warming death predictions (all the way up to the Earth resembling Venus or being completely submerged under water), Peak Oil, super diseases, etc etc.

It just got me thinking…why are we so fascinated about end times and the destruction of the world? I mean, I assume that they wouldn’t play these type shows if they weren’t popular…and this doesn’t seem to be a modern invention based on past predictions of gloom and doom. So, why are we, as a species so fascinated by this stuff…is there some kind of deep seated need we have for it? Are there any cultures that DON’T dwell on these things…or have their own dooms day predictions?

-XT

2

Um… speculations… perhaps plays into some masochistic tendencies among hoi polloi, some feeling of “we’re finally getting what we deserve for our sins!”

Maybe a touch of sadism thrown in there as well: “You lousy bastids will get what you deserve, and I’ll be dead as well, but at least Justice Will Be Served!”

The people who make such predictions get to sound like experts, like they know what they’re talking about, and no one’s going to ask them how many world-ending disasters they have personal experience with. In fact, if the predictions come out wrong, no one’s going to condemn the doom prophets much, just stop listening to them.

So, the doom prophets have more to gain than lose.

Hard to tell what was going on in Nostradomus’ head. He didn’t actually make a lot of real sense, did he?

3

Well, I’ve got a lot of bills I’d just as soon not be bothered with, so it could certainly come in handy!

4

I think part of it is some sort of desire for the complete mayhem that would follow. I mean can you imagine how people would react if they knew the world was going to be gone at the end of the week. It would be one hell of a party with nothing to lose.

5

I think of Albert Camus saying: “Don’t wait for the Last Judgment–it happens every day.” I take the apocalypse theme as symbolic of a personal crisis in which everything you rely on psychologically is overturned and it seems like it’s the end of the world–i.e. the end of the personal world you’d constructed for yourself. My theory is that ancient initiates used the powerful symbolism to prepare for deep inner transformation–but hoi polloi didn’t get it and interpreted it literally.

6

I think people do have a deep-seated need to believe their lives are important. Believing that you’re living around the time of the end of the world makes your life seem more important, and makes the consequences of everything that happens in the world seem huge. The consequences could be dire, and it could all turn on YOU! Compare those feelings to the idea that humanity doesn’t really change and our culture and conflicts evolve gradually, as they have done for ages, rather than rushing toward a specific goal.

7

During my Bible as Lit class, one of my classmates had a very intriguing suggestion when we were discussing this topic. She said that every person experiences the “end of the world” and the concept of a worldwide apocalypse is simply an externalization of one’s own mortality. Your own death is cataclysmic to you, but not so much to the rest of the world. It’s a soothing rationalization to imagine that the world won’t continue without you. I think that she had a point there, but I’m not sure it explains all of the apocalyptic fantasies that exist in the world.

Beyond that egocentrism, I think that some of us actually want the world to end in a way. Most post-apocalyptic literature has an underlying theme of rebuilding things, or creating a new society or way of life. I think that this probably appeals to people in the same way that colonizing the Americas appealed to Europeans. Religions might focus on the end of the world (leaning towards the externalization of one’s own mortality) but entertainment focuses on what happens after the end of the world (appealing to this sort of “colonist” fantasy). That ends up being a very primitive sort of drive. I imagine if my cat was able to tell stories, he’d have one about the majority of other cats disappearing, leaving him less competition for food, space and females.

8

Might it have to do with an inablilty to imagine infinity? I can kind of imagine thousands and millions of years, but only in a “dinosaurs lived then” kind of way. If I wasn’t exposed to modern paleontology, I might not have any ability to do that. If every time you can imagine has been measured by a couple of lifetimes, then the idea of the end or death of everything may seem like a more reasonable idea then the world continuing for thousands and millions more years.

9

I think humanity has a deep-seated need for stories—stories that have a beginning, middle, and a satisfying ending. So it comes naturally to want a satisfying, climactic ending to the Story of the World.

10

I think Johanna hit the nail on the head here. CarieD adds some interesting stuff to this.

  1. (initial capital letter) revelation (def. 4).
  2. any of a class of Jewish or Christian writings that appeared from about 200 b.c. to a.d. 350 and were assumed to make revelations of the ultimate divine purpose.
  3. a prophetic revelation, esp. concerning a cataclysm in which the forces of good permanently triumph over the forces of evil.
  4. any revelation or prophecy.
  5. any universal or widespread destruction or disaster: the apocalypse of nuclear war.

One of the problems with it is it’s cooptation by materialistic philosophy, thus definition 5 has become the standard definition in most people’s minds. Any serious or significant paradigm changing event is apocalyptic, and can be personal, societal, geologic, or cosmic.

The etymology is interesting. (As Flight of the Valkyries comes on my playlist)

apocalypse
c.1384, “revelation, disclosure,” from Church L. apocalypsis “revelation,” from Gk. apokalyptein “uncover,” from apo- “from” (see apo-) + kalyptein “to cover, conceal” (see Calypso). The Christian end-of-the-world story is part of the revelation in John of Patmos’ book “Apokalypsis” (a title rendered into Eng. as “Apocalypse” c.1230 and “Revelations” by Wyclif c.1380).

Revealing and Concealing is a very integral part of the mystical process. As Johanna said, the initiatic process for ancient rites was personally apocalyptic, but people have taken it a bit too literally.

Every person’s death is for them the annihilation of the entire world. We have since nonsensically applied the term ‘significance’ to our lives, when our lives are significant no matter what, they mean something, what they mean is well, open to interpretation. Significance is not some sort of earned importance, but simply a subjective measure of one thing in relation to another.

We need apocalypse because it is the idea that our current form of suffering in this world is not permanent, that something will change.

Also, December 21, 2012 IS NOT the end of the Mayan Calendar. It’s the end of the Long Count which is some sort of cycle of 13 that I don’t particularly get. It’s a subroutine, but it’s not anywhere near the end, in my understanding it is still calculated out beyond that by thousands of years.

11

I think organized religions have a need for apocalyptic threats. Keeps the sheeple in line.

12

Another angle is that we project our own death onto the world. Each of us has our own apocaplypse coming in a few decades, and for us the world will truly end on that day.

13

What about apocalyptic threats that come from non-religious sources though? Half the stuff I watched didn’t have any kind of religious theme at all. Certainly in the past what you say is true…if not all then the vast majority of such predictions came from religious sources.

-XT

p.s. Whenever I see or hear ‘sheeple’ now I think of that rather disturbing Toyota commercial I saw at the movie theater the other day. :slight_smile:

14

I am curious what those might be. You mentioned the Mayan calendar and Greek oracles, which are both religious in nature. What other references did the documentary mention?

15

I think part of it is that even if you remove all religion out of it, it’s still going to happen one day in one form or another. It is something that has come out of religion that man has later found to be a indisputable FACT - The earth will pass away.

16

Well, as I said, separate shows talked about different dooms day type scenerios. Even the Global Warming crowd (well, some of the fringe elements) came in for some of the fun. As in my OP there were shows about big rocks destroying the world, about super blasts of cosmic rays from supernovas doing the job, mega-volcanos and earth quakes, etc etc. The theme was all the same…the destruction of the world and/or humanity. These particular ‘predictions’ had absolutely nothing to do with religion.

Also, you might be amused to hear that our ‘collective unconsiousness’ can be tapped in the form of some guru with a computer program that scans the internet for key phrases and such, and then make future predictions based on this facinating data. This again has nothing to do with organized religion (except perhaps the fradulant aspects :)). Appearently this wise machine (program) has predicted Global Warming and the destruction of humanity (interstingly enough around 2012…).

So, while I agree that initially predictions of gloom and doom probably predominantly came from religious sources, I don’t thats the link. I think that religious were maybe just fulfilling some kind of deeper need that humans had by providing them with these gloom and doom predictions. Today we have fringe scientists types (or maybe just TV producer types) that are doing what religion did in the past.

The question is…why. (BTW, some VERY interesting answers to that question so far…thanks!)

-XT

17

I misunderstood your OP. I thought it had to do with specific predictions, like the Apocalypse, and not just specualtion about hypothetical ways catastrophe might occur.

18

No worries…as I was the writer I concede it was probably confusing. :slight_smile:

-XT

19

I also dig this much. It’s an interesting way to look at it.