Stop fantasizing about the apocalypse and do something good for people

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s come to my attention that people love apocalyptic fantasies–stories about society falling into chaos for one reason or another, like zombies, or vampires, or a biological/technological catastrope, or a giant meteor, or a (possibly race- or ideology-based) civil war.

And to a large extent, they like them, because they fantasize about living in a world in which they’re free to take action with impunity, specifically, to murder their fellow human beings without facing consequences. And they’re justified in doing so (in these fantasies) because the drive to survive in chaos justifies anything.

Of course, in the real world, catastrophes occasionally do happen. And when they do, civil society can be disrupted for some time. But when that happens, invariably, the majority of ordinary people immediately start working together to try to help others.

Like when the World Trade Center was destroyed and chaos descended upon Manhattan, many, many people, including rich celebrities, dropped what they were doing. Some of them risked their lives to save others. Some of them set up relief stations for rescue workers. These things happened fast.

This kind of thing isn’t limited to Americans. In 1947, when India was partitioned, my father, then a pre-teen, was living with his family in Panjab, near what was to become the border between India and Pakistan.

My father’s family was Hindu, but they, like many Indians, lived in a mixed society. At some point, news of the slaughter between Hindus and Muslims started spreading. And my father’s Muslim neighbor came over to say “If things get bad, come to our house. We will protect you.”

This isn’t extraordinary heroism or courage. It’s the ordinary, every-day heroism and courage that ordinary human beings just trying to survive from day to day display in order to care for the people around them, be they strangers or no.

And yet our apocalyptic fantasies are more along the lines of The Walking Dead, in which the survivors of the apocalypse prey on each other. And even the news focuses on “looters,” who most of the time are just people trying to survive.

And there also seems to be a trend among younger people to wish for “the meteor” or “the asteroid” to destroy life on our planet, which has become unbearable because of, say, climate change, or politics. That might start as a joke, but it can feed a person’s decision-making.

Instead of giving in to despair, instead of fantasizing about the end of the world, or a chaotic world in which one is free to act brutally with impunity, go out there and find the people who need help, because helping people feeds your sense of hope, your sense of value, and makes you happier, and makes the world better.

There are homeless people in your town. There are addicts. There are people who are suffering from abuse or neglect. There are people being victimized by predatory lenders. There are people who have lost their homes in natural disasters or wars or economic or political chaos. There are people fleeing from violence or deprivation.

You have skills. You can do things. You might be an accountant or a financial planner. Maybe you can build or fix things. Maybe you can organize a relief center. Maybe you can give legal advice. Maybe you can arrange for mental health treatment. Maybe you can drive someone to the doctor, or deliver groceries, or pay someone’s school lunch bill.

You can do something for someone who needs it. If you’re feeling despair over the fate of the world, go out and create hope for someone else.

2

Moving from GD to MPSIMS.

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3

IMHO, part of the appeal of the apocalypse fantasy isn’t so much the desire to be able to slaughter at will, but rather, a relief from one’s burden of responsibilities. If you work a hateful 9-5 job, pay bills, have loans to pay off for the next decade or two, or are an engineering student sweating over what will be the next out of many calculus exams to come, or have a 30-page paper to write that’s due next Friday, or just hate school and the modern life in general, then the idea of suddenly being freed of all that and put into a very different, normal-rules-don’t-apply world can be exhilarating.
I was in Taiwan in September 1999 when a 7.3 earthquake struck. It caused widespread damage, all kinds of upheaval and refugees (but no violence,) many lives were disrupted, some for a very long time. Some people had to live in tents in makeshift refugee camps for a while. One of my most vivid memories of the time was that some schoolchildren seemed positively **delighted **with this sudden reprieve from their normal heavy grind of school, classes and homework. It was like summer break, except one without warning. Suddenly being unexpectedly freed of responsibility.

4

I’d say the OP’s rant would be better aimed at “preppers”.

I enjoy some apocalyptic stories, movies and TV shows, but it’s sure as hell not because I eagerly fantasize about it really happening.

But having met a few preppers, people who obsessively collect gear and skills for imagined catastrophes, I think there are a few of them who are looking forward to the day it all goes bad. And there certainly are some who have real skills that could be better applied to doing positive good.

5

You first. I bet if you sell your computer and drop internet access, you can feed lots of homeless people.

6

I don’t have expenses relating to preparing for an apocalypse.

7

But you spend money on things that you don’t literally need to live that you could instead be spending helping others. How many meals for third-world orphans could you pay for with your monthly cable and internet bill? Or does policing purchases apply only to other people’s choices?

8

Are you a prepper?

If so, my OP is saying that you’re doing something that doesn’t help the world, and doesn’t help you. Your fantasies about surviving the apocalypse are shallow, selfish, and harmful. They harm your psyche, and they make you a worse person, to yourself and to society.

I’m not “policing” your choices. I’m telling you that you are bad for the world and bad for yourself. And if you want to stop being bad for the world and bad for yourself, there’s something you can do about it.

The first thing is to stop fantasizing about how awesome you’re going to be in the apocalypse.

9

And if you really think there’s going to be an apocalypse, the energy you spend prepping should instead be spent on helping other people rather than your awesome survival skillz.

10

Exactly- it’s FANTASY. By its very definition and nature, it’s fantastic.

It’s not supposed to be realistic, and it’s not even supposed to be logical- where’s the fun in having a sexy daydream where one of you has bad breath, or gets a cramp, or any of the other myriad of real-life stuff that happens.

Apocalypse fantasies are much the same; nobody wants to dream about the apocalypse where they’re dirt farmers trying to grow enough to survive, while eating rats, squirrels and grackles to stay alive in the meantime, while praying you don’t get a minor infection that’ll kill you.

11

Not going to address how your willingness to help the needy goes only to the point that it won’t lower your expectations for your lifestyle? Such as, you value your computer and internet access more than you value feeding poor children?

12

The apocalypse seems to be a time of almost total government control, not anarchy, not chaos, but strict order and rule.

13

I’m only going to talk about how your prepping for an apocalypse makes your life worse and the lives of the people around you worse and the whole society worse.

This isn’t about spending money. It’s about how everything about you – your energy, your presence, your attitude, your actions, your existence – makes everthing worse when you are spending anything – whether it’s time or physical or mental energy – on how awesome you’re going to be in an apocalypse.

And you don’t have to make everything worse. You can make everything better. Including your own brain. You have options.

14

You are jumping to the false conclusion that I am a doomsday prepper when actually all that I’m doing is pointing out what a hypocrite you are as long you are spending money on luxuries instead of charity.

15

The “you” is general, to the preppers that this thread is addressed to. The “jumping to the false conclusion” bit is a bit of false rhetoric, when you can see that it’s all covered by the “are you a prepper?” and “if so” part. Be smarter.

And the hypocrisy issue is a red herring. It’s not about spending money on luxuries. It’s about living a specific kind of life that isn’t good for the person in question, our society or the world. So, it’s irrelevant.

16

Those who just entertain an idle fantasy of leaving behind the life of mortgage payments and the rush hour traffic on the freeway and instead going down Fury Road with Mad Max, hey that’s just fun, no prob.

And, hell, I’ll even smile at the prepper who is stocking up on ammo and dehydrated food and “gold investments” (that unlike the other two will be worthless when the balloon goes up) but otherwise maintains a productive job.
But it’s the ones who feel like they should be somehow provoking the Big Confrontation, that will goad God TheirSelf to hurry up to bring Armageddon around, those are the ones that scare me and should scare us. IS/Daesh is one such group but there are those on this side of the water who seem to be looking forward to it too.

17

Except nothing in your OP says anything about preppers. Your post clearly goes after people who enjoy post-apocalyptic fiction. And you make the argument that such a luxury is a waste of time, better spent actually helping others.

There’s no valid argument in assuming that enjoying a particular genre of fiction means that people are obsessed with and secretly want an apocalypse to happen. It’s like saying that people who play violent games are actually violent, something proven completely false.

And hyperbole is not a great way to figure out what people really think. When a young person says they wish for a meteor wiping out life, they aren’t serious. They’re just using a metaphor to express how stressed out they are.

Now, with preppers, there is a better argument. But, even then, you need to limit yourself to the ones who seem obsessed with it, constantly buying stuff, and train for fighting people. I can agree that stuff is bad.

But that’s not who you called out in your OP. I’d be willing to bet money that Darren Garrison is someone who enjoys post-apocalyptic fiction, and felt personally insulted by your assumptions about him. You are, in effect, telling him he should give up the luxury of his preferred genre of escapist fiction and go do charity instead.

And I’d bet you could come up with this sort of deconstruction for literally anything you enjoy. It could always be proof that you’re actually depressed and need to go out volunteering and making the world a better place.

Any argument that a genre of fiction is bad for people’s psychological health in general (rather than on an individual basis) is flawed.

18

Despite my other post, I do wish to point out he is not being a hypocrite. He didn’t ever actually say that one should never spend money on luxuries. He’s going after a specific luxury, with a specific (highly flawed) argument about what it is bad.

Restricting it to the so-called preppers who are obsessed with preparing for the apocalypse is a much better argument. Leave people who play Fallout out of it.

19

Someone else mentioned peepers and it’s a more extreme example, but it applies to the whole range. I’m targeting a whole attitude, an approach to life, a viewpoint. Not just what movies or shoes you might watch but the entire outlook it gives you about what’s possible in the world and what it’s worth trying to accomplish.

It’s not just enjoying fiction, it’s buying that premise as the central story in your life and looking at the real world and thinking we’ll I’m not going to actually support doing real work. I’m just going to hand back and make sarcastic comments about meteors.

And hyperbole, of you go back to the Sam Rome over and over, does affect your outlook, and eventually what you’re willing to put effort into, and how much empathy you offer to the people who need help.

Casual banter reinforces ways of dealing with the world. It’s not just isolated humor. Much of the time it’s not even really a joke. If you pretend to be something long enough, you actually become that thing.

20

Nope. Just don’t care for people telling others how they should or shouldn’t spend their disposable income. Especially when they wrap themselves in a cloak of self-righteously telling them to give it to charity. The only people who get to do that are those who choose to live an asetic lifestyle and give almost everything to charity. Otherwise you show that you value the money you spending on things not absolutely necessary for survival more than you care about all of those poor desperate people. The money you pay for a cup of Starbucks? That could pay for several meals at a soup kitchen, and you would be just as well off with tapwater. Anything short of that is hypocricy.