I’ve always thought the real loonies of our time are the climate change alarmists, convinced we’re about to bring an apocalypse down on our heads based on portents in the sky. They had that in the Dark Ages: it was called aeromancy.
Like the followers of loony gurus who predict the end of the world but soldier on when wrong, nothing shakes the climate nutters’ faith. New York under water by 2020 (James Hansen, 1988)? Check. 50 million climate refugees by 2010 (the UN)? Check. Every glacier gone by 2035 (IPCC)? Check. None of it happens, and yet they still believe.
I’d say it will fascinate anthropologists one day, except they’re just as complicit, so they’ll have to find a way of writing about it without mentioning themselves.
The truth is we’re all doing it and have always done it. Frank Kermode wrote about it in the 1960s – we all naturally believe we are living at the end of time, because we are, and each of us is going to suffer an inevitable apocalyptic finale, whether we like it or not. So all these apocalypse end-timers are really just trying (and failing) to come to terms with their own deaths – Greta Thunberg at the head of the queue. I felt the same about nuclear Armageddon in my teenage years; got over it eventually, and just lived. My life.
Last edited 3 years ago by David Simpson
MW
Michael Whittock
4 years ago
This review doesn’t mention the Bible’s perspectives on the End. Maybe the author doesn’t include it in his book which would be a pity because I would enjoy reading his take on it. He uses the word “apocalypse” which is a biblical word (Greek) meaning revelation. The relevant parts of the Bible are a revelation from God about the various aspects of the End Time which He will initiate. Mark O’Connell’s anxieties would not be quieted by what is said, except that in the end the world will be as God originally intended it to be before humanity got its sinful hands on it. The line in the Lord’s Prayer “your Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven ” will finally become a glorious reality.
PL
plynamno1
4 years ago
One for the nutty, the neurotic or the narcissist ” not for me!
AH
AC Harper
4 years ago
By some strange coincidence I have just started playing Far Cry 5 again. The story is about Our Hero (with guns) leading the resistance to a religious cult (with guns), preaching doomsday and the apocalypse, who have taken over a valley in Montana.
The cultists are drug addled, brutal, and inhuman and the resistance mostly formed from preppers. For some reason I have found the second playing far more visceral and upsetting than before. Perhaps if you look for an apocalypse you will find it; perhaps the Coronavirus Crisis exposes the fragility of normality for us all?
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I’ve always thought the real loonies of our time are the climate change alarmists, convinced we’re about to bring an apocalypse down on our heads based on portents in the sky. They had that in the Dark Ages: it was called aeromancy.
Like the followers of loony gurus who predict the end of the world but soldier on when wrong, nothing shakes the climate nutters’ faith. New York under water by 2020 (James Hansen, 1988)? Check. 50 million climate refugees by 2010 (the UN)? Check. Every glacier gone by 2035 (IPCC)? Check. None of it happens, and yet they still believe.
I’d say it will fascinate anthropologists one day, except they’re just as complicit, so they’ll have to find a way of writing about it without mentioning themselves.
The truth is we’re all doing it and have always done it. Frank Kermode wrote about it in the 1960s – we all naturally believe we are living at the end of time, because we are, and each of us is going to suffer an inevitable apocalyptic finale, whether we like it or not. So all these apocalypse end-timers are really just trying (and failing) to come to terms with their own deaths – Greta Thunberg at the head of the queue. I felt the same about nuclear Armageddon in my teenage years; got over it eventually, and just lived. My life.
This review doesn’t mention the Bible’s perspectives on the End. Maybe the author doesn’t include it in his book which would be a pity because I would enjoy reading his take on it.
He uses the word “apocalypse” which is a biblical word (Greek) meaning revelation. The relevant parts of the Bible are a revelation from God about the various aspects of the End Time which He will initiate.
Mark O’Connell’s anxieties would not be quieted by what is said, except that in the end the world will be as God originally intended it to be before humanity got its sinful hands on it. The line in the Lord’s Prayer “your Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven ” will finally become a glorious reality.
One for the nutty, the neurotic or the narcissist ” not for me!
By some strange coincidence I have just started playing Far Cry 5 again. The story is about Our Hero (with guns) leading the resistance to a religious cult (with guns), preaching doomsday and the apocalypse, who have taken over a valley in Montana.
The cultists are drug addled, brutal, and inhuman and the resistance mostly formed from preppers. For some reason I have found the second playing far more visceral and upsetting than before. Perhaps if you look for an apocalypse you will find it; perhaps the Coronavirus Crisis exposes the fragility of normality for us all?