Thursday, December 20, 2012
Apocalypse When
Apparently not now, as here on 12-20-2012, a trip through Costco is not even slightly a madhouse, even a mere few days before Christmas. My suspicion is that the whole 2012 thing was just a convenient meme to hang the gut feeling that our entire society and way of life are well past their sell-by date. While lots of people, myself included, do indeed believe that the existing order is unsustainable and will collapse in a reasonable amount of time, the 21st of December holds no special significance. For if it did in even the minds of a very very small minority, Costco would be cleaned out rapidly of things like rice and thrice-cleaned beans, both of which they sell at prices very close to the price per ton on the world market for such goods.
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It's strange. Nearly everyone seems to think everything's peachy, yet nearly everyone is fascinated by end-of-the-world symbolism. The fashion now is the zombie apocalypse, but not so long ago it was nuclear annihilation. You don't even have to go back to the Cold War; Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" was written in 2006, after all, and the apocalypse it depicts at least involved a hell of a lot of fire.
Clearly this sort of imagery speaks to people. The mushroom cloud in particular. Close your eyes and picture it. A sudden shear of blinding light and a blast of deafening noise, like a hundred million angels blaring trumpets. Suddenly a vast pillar of flame dwarfing whole cities. The sky itself set ablaze. Skyscrapers -- monuments to human ingenuity -- swept aside like sand castles before a vigorous tide. Fire and light and noise; a sudden, violent, unceremonious ending to things. A symbolic anticipation of judgment for an age long overdue for it.
Proph,
Frequently the gut knows what the mind tries desperately to deny.
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