Rushing to post @ 4:19 pm ... er ... (Insert title here)
But we've supposedly been rushing towards the Apocalypse since the beginning of history.
However, I do wonder about the difference between simply traipsing blindly toward Apocalypse and making a specific point of it. I mean, if you slip and fall into the Grand Canyon, is it the same thing as taking an intentional flying leap into the Abyss?
I agree that people have been rushing toward Apocalypse since before the idea of Apocalypse arose. But if we look at Apocalypse as a theoretical result, we come back to analogies:
- Result:
Joe is dead.
- Possible cause 1: Joe overdosed on heroin
- Possible cause 2: Somebody overdosed Joe with heroin
Are the possible causes the same?
- Result:
Humanity is extinct.
- Possible cause 1: A comet struck the Earth, rendering it inhospitable to human life
- Possible cause 2: Circumstances of human institutions failed to prevent a massive epidemic from critically wounding humanity's ability to survive
- Possible cause 3: People chose to fight until someone finally started nuking the planet
We might then examine in what way acts of deliberation (e.g. war, murder) equate to failures to prevent (overdose, epidemic), or to accidents of circumstance (comet).
And when we consider that humanity has been rushing toward the idea of Apocalypse, I would ask that you consider that the Apocalypse I saw Americans at least rushing toward was definitively according to premillenarian superstitions I picked up throughout my upbringing. The factors I noted all come from a bizarre Judeo-Christian notion that, for all the exposure I had to it as a child, I cannot find an advocate of today. Of course, since we're past the year 2000 ...
Hey, do you remember a Korean sect that declared Judgment Day to be coming in October, 1993 ...? I mean, I knew a couple of Americans who spent the day in question in their dorm rooms in prayer on the basis of a wingnut pseudo-Christian cult ... people are
praying for the end of the world. I suppose in that sense I should not be surprised that Christian and post-Christian America produced a pseudo-Christian millenarian rush toward idiocy.
It also recognizes that none of us are alone in facing this fact; we are all going to die.
Where I disagree with many, and perhaps you might here agree with me, is that I don't find this to be any reason to hurry the process along. Addiction ... now
that is a good reason to rush it along. (Phack! Phone calls from my mother and from my partner ... I officially
need a cigarette. Yes, it's true, and yes, it's convenient for illustrating the point. So ... yeah. Er ...)
To an extent I must agree with Hobbes and accept the social contract; after all, this is what government is for . In order to have public works we must sacrifice some measure of freedom.
I go more with
Rousseau's
Contrat Social, which "
propounds a doctrine which already had a long history in the struggle against the older view of the divine right of kings, namely, that government gets its authority over us by a willing consent on our part, not by the authorization of God. " (The
boldfaced portion, of course, is also reflected in the Declaration of Independence.)
People often point to the sacrifice of freedom for the public good, but in my time the idea has been marred by conservatives who saw rights such as free speech and religion, the right to Life and Liberty, and even the Pursuit of Happiness (in other words, the reasons we have this country in the first place) to be subordinate to political and economic concerns. The sacrifices people are being asked to make are not those which will bring them the greatest real benefit, but merely those which bring the superficial appearance of benefit.
I admit that I'm left with the possibly erroneous notion that you're advising that the fleecing is what government is for, but I'm pretty sure that I'm wrong in that. Rather, it is fair to say that I'm not sure what it is you say government is for. However, to carry on despite my contextual confusion:
Still it seems as if the means has become the end.
Which leads me to a number of those dualistic questions that I usually ask people. For instance:
- Do governments exist for the benefit of the people, or do people exist to serve governments?
- Is "economy" a device for the benefit of the people, or do people exist to serve the economy?
(That second point arose during the first Clinton term, as the country spent orgiastically, piling up consumer debts while desperately trying to keep the economy afloat, only to be saved by the Netscape Revolution.)
Politics becomes not a means to consolidate a group effort but an end to itself; religion becomes an institution (and I wonder how many realize what an oxymoron that is)?
Well, depending on your opinion of how microcosmically accurate Sciforums is or has been in its interparadigmatic dynamics, we might speculate that, among the religious, very few realize it.
I honestly think it has something to do with the (asserted) fact that Americans, at least, suffer such information overload that the data which represent the
reasons "society" or "civilization" are good ideas have simply gotten stowed away somewhere in the cellar to be forgotten until the great-grandchildren stumble across a treasure-trove in a musty steamer chest.
:m:,
Tiassa
