In a piece for The Chronicle of Higher Education, author and political science PhD student Rob Goodman discusses apocalyptic literature and society’s fascination with the end of the world. Goodman calls the hype around doom prophets like Harold Camping’s (21 May 2011) forecasts into question, saying that, “We flatter ourselves when we imagine a world incapable of lasting without us in it—a world that, having ceased to exist, cannot forget us, discard us, or pave over our graves”. Goodman also declares that, “We’re virtually guaranteed to witness the end of nothing except our lives, and the present, far from fulfilling anything, is mainly distinguished by being the one piece of time with us in it.”
According to Goodman we’re currently living in “a dystopia boom” in which apocalyptic literature like Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games, Alan Weisman’s The World Without Us and Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies top best-seller lists. The reason, Goodman argues, is that we live in what philosopher John Gray describes as “a culture transfixed by the spectacle of its own fragility”. Goodman calls this “dystopian narcissism: the conviction that our anxieties are uniquely awful; that the crises of our age will be the ones that finally do civilization in; that we are privileged to witness the beginning of the end”.
The author then continues to discuss the impulse called “typology”, which he describes as a way of observing the present. “Ordinary historical thinking tells us to look backward to understand the present; typological thinking tells us to make sense of the present in light of the promised future. The events of past and present are revealed in their true form only when our faith reverses the flow of history.” This, reasons Goodman, is what modern society also does regarding the apocalypse. “Our culture’s apocalyptic stories, not least the Book of Revelation, resonate in part because they promise uncovered meaning.”
Goodman goes on to discuss Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Road as well as Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon with these comments in mind.
Nineteen days after the world failed to end, blood stopped flowing to the brain of Harold Camping, prophet of doom. Had he felt his stroke coming as he confidently forecast apocalypse? Maybe not; maybe he had no more foresight into his own demise than the demise of the world. Or maybe he had simply confused the two—after all, he was approaching his 90th birthday, and his own mortality couldn’t have seemed far off when, on national billboards and his own radio network, he set a date (May 21, 2011) for the end of days. For some, it is a short mental step from “my end is imminent” to “the end of everything is imminent.” Call it apocalyptic narcissism.
We flatter ourselves when we imagine a world incapable of lasting without us in it—a world that, having ceased to exist, cannot forget us, discard us, or pave over our graves. Even if the earth no longer sits at the center of creation, we can persuade ourselves that our life spans sit at the center of time, that our age and no other is history’s fulcrum. “We live in the most interesting times in human history … the days of fulfillment,” writes the Rev. E.W. Jackson, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia, in words that could have also come from the mouth of Saint Paul or Shabbetai Zevi or Hal Lindsey or any other visionary unable to accept the hard truth of the apocalyptic lottery: We’re virtually guaranteed to witness the end of nothing except our lives, and the present, far from fulfilling anything, is mainly distinguished by being the one piece of time with us in it.
Book details
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy
EAN: 9780330513005
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Rome’s Last Citizen by Rob Goodman, Jimmy Soni
EAN: 9780312681234
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
EAN: 9780439023528
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
EAN: 9780439023535
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
EAN: 9780439023542
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- The World without Us by Alan Weisman
EAN: 9781905264032
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
EAN: 9781442419810
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Specials by Scott Westerfeld
EAN: 9781442419797
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Pretties by Scott Westerfeld
EAN: 9781442419780
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Extras by Scott Westerfeld
EAN: 9781442419803
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- 1984 by George Orwell
EAN: 9780451524935
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
- Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon
EAN: 9781857988062
Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Image: Shutterstock