Apocalyptiblog

Okay, since several of my posts have dealt with the end of the world in one form or another, it got me thinking:  why does the phrase "The End of the World" exist?

I mean, I used it as the title of a song in my musical Jonesing, which had an excellent premiere last month and is now being put together in a studio to hopefully send it out to many people. The phrase is everywhere, but it doesn't suprise or confuse me as much as the phrase "The End of Days" or "The Apocalypse." Both of these terms make a certain kind of sense:  The Apocalypse is an event, and events end. Days are measurements of time, so, of course, they end. But the end of the world itself - as if it were also an event, or measurement of time - is very strange to me.

See, the implication is that when we go, the world goes, too; it's an extremely self-centered idea, but then again, we are an extremely self-centered species. So far, we seem to be the only species in the history of this planet that stopped evolving and started changing the world around us to fit our needs, instead. We seem to be the only species that can truly contemplate the massive gulf of time, at least what came before us. So why is it so hard to contemplate what comes after us?

The realization of death is a powerful thing. There's tons to read on it, like here:  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/death/

Or, more abstractly, here:
http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm

And many places elsewhere. What I think is that, upon the discovery of death, which most of us make as a child, there are really two outcomes:  acceptance, and denial. From these outcomes spring much of the rest of our lives, how we define purpose, beauty, love, direction, balance... everything. We are bound to a certain amount of time, it seems, which none of us can truly predict. I have never understood suicide, but I understand the desire for control over something, anything, and how that can often translate into an attempt to control one's destiny, in as horrible a manner as it is. It can go even further, and the selfishness takes over, and people want to end others' lives as well as their own. This sickening and rabid behavior is sad and avoidable... but not if all we do is blame each other.

Whenever there is a mass shooting, or mass hysteria over something, or a blatant, purposeful desire to cause the end of life or "the world," people cry out for some answer. They turn to god. They turn to the government. They turn to Fox News... probably the absolute worst of those choices (Probably). As the Witch said in Into the Woods, "What matters is the blame, somebody to blame."

Today marks the end of the thirteen baktun of the Mayan calendar, the end of a massive cycle that people have been talking about for a very long time... since, as we all know, civilizations that fell at the hands of unforseen circumstances are REALLY good at predicting doomsday(s).

Already, the news is flashing reports of a shooting in Pennsylvania, people visiting Chichen Itza to soak up cosmic energy, people trying to reach a tiny French village so a UFO can take them away in time. It is really fascinating to me how badly people want things to end.

Doomsday planners and believers have been around for an extremely long time. I'm fairly certain I've said a bit on the subject in one way or another in my blogs. And I think that the phrase that puzzles me is symptomatic of the selfishness we all exhibit, regularly, in our lives. Jesus, look at our current Congress; how much more selfish a body can you find?! "I'm taking all my toys and going elsewhere!" "I need all the money I can get so I'm not as poor as you!" "Don't take my guns, you don't have the right to tell me when I can and can't shoot things and/or people who might not also have guns!" "Don't take away my rights to an abortion or birth control, your religion is stupid!" "Don't tell me I'm racist, I just don't think we're ready for a black president!" I'll freely admit some of those are exaggerations, or hyperbole, or just flat out nasty... but the rhetoric in them is symptomatic of what truly is wrong with the people we've come to trust with our lives and the continued functioning of our society. We just... can't... get along.

As a self-aware species, there is a certain logic to our selfishness. We're pretty much all born sociopathic; the universe is reeeeeally tiny to us, and mostly just embodied by our own personal space. Things feel good, or hurt us. We sleep, or we wake. We are the most important part, and everything is done for us. We are incapable of finding our own food, our own shelter and clothing; we rely on others, who will often supply it. It is, quite simply, the way of the animals, to propogate and protect our species.

THEN, other people occur. God (or the Montessori system) says "let there be interaction" and there is. Whether our parents read to us from a young age or we simply discover someone else who can make pseudo-similar sounds, we begin to communicate. We realize that not everyone wants to give you everything, that sometimes you have to share, that compromise is inevitable, and that in the end, everything goes away, to make room for something new. You don't stay in preschool forever. You don't have the same friends forever. Sometimes you don't have the same PARENTS forever.

The book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum is not compulsory reading, but it really should be. Although often saccharine in it's analysis of how people of a young age get along, it bears such powerful meaning on human life in general that it is truly astonishing to see how quickly we abandon those principles as we age.

One of the problems of our society is how rapidly it advances; our technology grew up before we did. We now know very little of what it is like to be a speck in the eye of the storm, to be unprotected from the unfairness of life, and to realize how much we need each other, just as we did when we were very little. We've come to believe that success is prosperity, the accumulation of things, the realization of rightness. We forget that some of the happiest places on earth are some of the poorest, the most rundown, what WE in comfortable bastions of "First World Problem Land" would think of as terrible and sad. They have hope, and love, and a sense of joy that transcends many problems. We say it is because "they do not know any better." Perhaps we are right, but it does not change this fact.

When we say "The End of the World," we mean us, not the world. We ARE the world, to us. Ourselves, our loved ones, our society, all the things that matter to us... not the things that matter to others. We cannot fathom the world existing beyond us - and, in some cases, don't want to allow it to. The world is something which has existed for an extremely long time (see my quip about fossils in an earlier post). It's gotten along fine without us before, and it will get along fine without us in the future. It will end, eventually, in the most literal sense of that word:  either as the sun expands or from some other unimagineable celestial event, this planet will shrivel up and blow away into cosmic dust. But THE WORLD is an idea, in the context of that phrase. We should learn that... and respect it.

But people are impatient. People don't want to wait that long for the end... because they can't. They are limited, mayfly-like in their navel-gazing pursuit of things. The rich die; the poor die; life is a gift that far too few people cherish. I myself have contemplated numerous ways to try and live forever, not because I'm greedy, but because I want to see what we become, and if we really do matter to the universe. I understand the desire of others for the end of all things because it is very human to do so, to be upset that we would be left behind, to be passed over for some big revelation or discovery. I am grateful to live in the time I do, when we have a greater understanding of the universe and all it's wonders than ever before. But, I will not be alive in a thousand years, when we'll know even more. That is saddening, but it is also true, and so it is... okay.

I wish we could all say that to ourselves. "It's okay." Yesterday, and today, and tomorrow... are okay. If we live in this moment, and appreciate what we have, we won't be so fixated on the end, what we don't or won't have. The end of the world is an intangible construct; I think the reason people have become so obsessed with the Hadron Collider is because the stakes are higher. The world is bigger, so it'll take a lot more for it to end. When John of Patmos wrote the Book of Revelations on a tiny island in exile, he did not know how big the world was. He gave the names of places he knew, like Meggido and Jerusalem, because he was aware of them. His universe was small. Our universe is terrifyingly big. It encompasses people who believe other things besides us; it contains stars that are no longer just heavenly bodies but masses of gas and light and intense power; it holds wonders, "treasures to satiate curiosities both subtle and gross." And thus, we want it all... or none at all.

...There are about twelve hours til the end of "Mayan Doomsday." I wonder what -and when - the next doomsday will be?