The Death of the Millenarian

All my friends have post-apocalyptic dreams.  It’s a common thread that connects this age group, or at least the segment of this age group that I am drawn to have conversations with.  A few of my friends have an uncanny ability to reconstruct these dreams in explicit detail, and when they get into it, we all listen respectfully.  These are our ghost stories, and they come straight from this generation’s subconscious.  All ghost stories are assembled from humanity’s hidden desires; however, the post-apocalyptic setting is our thing.  The subject has been dealt with before (over and over again since the Book of Revelations was written), but it was resurrected with the modern age.  Cinema was the most popular American art form of the 20th century, and it remains a revealing window into our collective psychology.  It’s telling that as the Western waned in popularity in the second half of the last century, the post-apocalyptic narrative arrived.   With the reality of the atomic bomb, humans came to understand that the end of the world isn’t likely to be handed down from a higher power.  When things come crashing, it will be our own doing, and it will not be a triumphant battle fought on the hills of Meggido.  This was the revelation that brought about the modern obsession with social collapse.

However, as the modern teenager grew into the modern adult, he became uninterested in the end of the world.  He got a job, he invested his income, and he procreated.  None of these things lend themselves to the psychology of potential apocalypse.  The B movie went the way of the drive-in, and the iron curtain collapsed.  The Right was vindicated, evil was destroyed, and humans were free to continue in the way of life of the Western citizen, mowing the lawn and watching television.  Our parents’ reality is set firmly in tune with the stock market and their pension plans.  They dream of their grandchildren coming of age in a world of luxury, and they have no reason to panic.

The Cold War is over, but my friends and I still dream of fallout.  As George A. Romero prepares to deliver himself to a new generation, we are as obsessed as ever with the concept of survival in hostile terrain.  The young and open-minded see this as a rational possibility, and this creates an alteration in our psyches.  The era of The Bomb is over, but the peak oil crisis looms large.  The fact that we are consuming more than this world can produce is apparent to most rational people, and only two possible outcomes can be drawn from this: A) Technology will save us.  B) The Earth, at the end of the Sixth Major Extinction, will be pushed to its limit of radical alteration, and the human population will be drastically reduced in an apocalyptic crash of its own making.  I figure the odds are close to a fifty/fifty split either way, so I prepare my future with both possibilities considered.  I work 50 hours a week to pay my debts, I contribute to a 401 K, and I value stability.  However, my politics and interests are fueled by the alternate potentiality.  I strongly value the right of the citizen to bear arms, and I am grateful that my family retains possession of a sizable piece of land surrounded on three sides by state forest.  I plan to become adept at gardening as soon as possible, and I push myself to strengthen my body and run marathons.  The plan is to purchase a motorcycle and have my escape route ready.  New York will be a warzone when Wall Street goes down…but I have at least fifteen years, so I’m not sweating it.

The word “apocalypse” has come to gain a negative connotation (our modern culture values power and control); however, in the Book of Revelation and in the minds of Christians it is a positive event.  The word translates literally from the ancient Greek “a lifting of the veil,” and the faithful believe it will be the ultimate revelation/confirmation.  And it is among the new generation of apocalypticists that the word has reverted to its ancient etymological form.  Like Christians we long for the outcome of a radically reorganized planet and we doubt the sustainability of mankind’s current way of life.  Add to this the romantic isolated aesthetic of the post-apocalypse, and the psychological element expressed in our recurring dreams is easily deconstructed:  we all desire the supreme beauty that comes of this world’s ultimate test.

But what comes after the test?  Is it annihilation, revelation, or reorganization?  I believe in all of these things, but the last is the most critical to understand, especially if the higher power does not come down to show us the way.  We are going to have to figure it out for ourselves with nothing but our surviving knowledge and DNA to guide us.  Thankfully, these are two extremely powerful things.  The opportunity to restore what we have stolen and return to the Golden Path will be made available.  If we succeed, we will put our highly evolved nervous system to good use and become a positive presence in this planet’s ecosystem for the first time.  If we fail, the alluring corruption of totalitarian agriculture will cover the world again.  More than anything, I believe success in this venture is the divine human purpose, with or without an imminent apocalyptic catalyst.  If technology comes to this culture’s rescue in time, we may have to wait millennia.  If not, I will be ready.