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The Apocalypse

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09:33 / 21.09.06

The countdown to Armageddon is well and truly ticking, and we're probably within a decade or so of such radical change that it's pointless speculating what, how, why or where.

Armageddon's a bit like practical fusion generators isn't it? Always ten years away.

I'm also deeply inspired to completely quit my life and find a small Green Corner to fight for, professionally, and just go at it hammer and tongs. Help. People, the land, the sea. Help. And learn a few more real and earthy skills...yurt building, smithying, healing, foraging, that kind of thing. Hunter/Gatherer/Healer, you know?

Yeah, that's right. Go backwards not forwards. That'll help you when whatever vague apocalyptic event happens. Of course you'll also need to learn to mine the metal for all that smithying. Plus, what use is foraging? From what you're saying there won't be anything to forage for.

Surely an oncoming armageddon is just one more reason to get off the planet and make sure that all our eggs aren't in the same basket when the bad stuff happens.

My mate, who is Jewish, is moving to Israel, for, in his own words 'front row seats when it (Armageddon) really starts in earnest'. Which is quite amusing and possibly a great idea.

You won't be saying that when Cthulhu wakes up.

Sorry for the extreme cynicism (well...not really) but this stuff all sounds like pre-millenial tension coming a decade late. You're just the last in a long, long, loooong line of doomsayers. Why're your "prophecies" any more reliable than anyone elses?

Of course people should prepare for possible cataclysms and what have you. But rather than retreat to a forest and learn how to make horseshoes why not actually do something to try and help people now? You want to learn to be a healer? Why not train as a paramedic? That'll be a much more useful skillset to have at the End than knowing which tree bark is good for curing a headache.

Of course, working on finding ways of preserving human knowledge through a cataclysm so the survivors can re-build faster is a good idea too. Build a library in a bomb shelter and work out how to ensure survivors realise it's there.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

09:51 / 21.09.06

Le sigh

Umm...what forest? What horseshoe? What, for that matter, prophecies?

FYI

Green Corner=Environmental political-social issue. Not shack in the woods.

Healer=cranial-sacral and deep-tissue massage training. Appreciate the suggestion of paramedic, but not quite me.

Thanks for your suggestions, though, it's handy having access to other people with minds for when my own is so rubbish.

It would appear that by and large, many here reading do not share my angst...or perhaps I have put a large and slightly off-smelling foot in the entire discussion by beginning with the origin of this angst within the visionary realms and then relating how this seems to chide rather neatly with the newspapers and the tellybox. It sets up the entire discourse which has, hopefully, now run its course...yes, yes, apocalyspse, again, doom, doom, heard it all before, what makes this any different, get a grip, get your act together, you're being silly...

Whew.

The political and scientific and historical side of this entire discourse is of course inextricable from the rest of it, but it would be really edifying, for me, if we could...actually, if we could just drop the whole thing.

Many thanks for the useful communication!

10:25 / 21.09.06

Umm...what forest? What horseshoe? What, for that matter, prophecies?

I obviously mis-interpretted what you meant by Green Corner, sorry 'bout that.

Horseshoes are, or at least were, made by blacksmiths in days gones by.

You have suggested a number of events which you feel will occur at some point in the future. You appear able to specify these events to the point of suggesting that half of the human race will die and the other half will most likely revert to cannibalism in approximately a decade's time. Your basis for your belief in these future events comes from travelling astrally.

Sounds like prophecies to me.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:27 / 21.09.06

Spoke too soon.

From Wikipedia:

"Present day — the Holocene extinction event. A 1998 survey by the American Museum of Natural History found that 70% of biologists view the present era as part of a mass extinction event, the fastest to have ever occurred. Some, such as E. O. Wilson of Harvard University, predict that man's destruction of the biosphere could cause the extinction of one-half of all species in the next 100 years. Research and conservation efforts, such as the IUCN's annual "Red List" of threatened species, all point to an ongoing period of enhanced extinction, though some offer much lower rates and hence longer time scales before the onset of catastrophic damage. The extinction of many megafauna near the end of the most recent ice age is also sometimes considered a part of the Holocene extinction event."

More on this

I am, by and large, a fairly smart fellow. I know all the Guff about doomsdays and End Of Times predictions and how tedious and tiresome it all is, and how long in the tooth and how every age, nation and culture blah blah fishpaste warrah warrah. But that doesn't mean there is no currency in considering that the current Global Scenario could be well and truly the closest we have ever been to realising it. That doen't mean that there is not some value in, coolly and measuredly, without hysteria or panic, considering what sort of preparations, spiritually and personally, might be made to encounter such an event.

Or maybe it does, and by the taste of this thread as it stands, it certainly does in here. No worries, I totally understand...that's why, obviously, I peppered the opening posts with attempts to signpost and clarify that I know how it all sounds...but kind of hoped that, by doing this, we might avoid the discussion becoming...what it's become, and explore a different side of the issue...no matter, though. Saul Goode. The Temple does what it does.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:30 / 21.09.06

Sounds like prophecies to me.

Fair enough. I can see why. It wasn't intended that way, though, which, I had hoped, the disclaimers and careful wording of the opening post might make clear.

Will aim for more clarity in future.

IF THERE IS ONE !!!!111!!23!! Mwahahahah...

trouser the trouserian

10:38 / 21.09.06

I have put a large and slightly off-smelling foot in the entire discussion by beginning with the origin of this angst within the visionary realms and then relating how this seems to chide rather neatly with the newspapers and the tellybox.

What interests me Buttergun, is that you seem to be expressing surprise that your visionary experience corresponded with things you read in newspapers or watched on television. Why shouldn't it?

10:38 / 21.09.06

I'm in the same boat as Trouser. My mother was a big CND protester. We went on marches, we talked about dying, we drank a lot of tea with other women who talked about dying.

Once you have watched 'Z for Zachariah' and 'When the Wind Blows' as a child and lived the fear, dreamed the dreams of nuclear war every night then nothing can scare you like that anymore. The situation the world is in now - to me it feels like nothing compared to truly believing that any day now the world was going to end.

And I did believe that.

I feel the worry - but sometimes you know, I think we like a good scare don't we? We have a kind of morbid fascination with the idea of the end of days, a love hate relationship. In some ways it's exciting; living off the land, fighting your corner, especially if, as I do, you know you'll be able to survive. I can build and sew and garden. I grow a lot of my own food already and I'm an Archer; I could shoot my food. By the end of the year I'll have a live-in van that runs on bio-diesel which would be useful for a little while, and in five years time I'll have a house which is totally autonomous and self-sufficient.

I even have a skill which I can still practice if anything happens and which I can use to trade. I can't fight, but hey, I live with a Berserker, a Norseman who is already preparing.

So there's the excitement of that. And then there is the worry bit, the frightened bit. The fear for the planet itself, for the people on it. Most of the people in this city, wouldn't survive any major event whereby they had to provide for themselves.

But I don't feel like I used to. I'm not scared.

Mainly I'm not because I don't think there will be a sudden cataclysmic event. I think we will slowly kill our planet a bit at a time, like we are doing. A bit less land, more floods, a bit hotter, incrementally. Year on year, on year.

Sure I'm an eco-warrior. I believe we should do something to stop the ruination of our planet and I already am doing. But I don't believe in a sudden event.

No big Armageddon here.

10:39 / 21.09.06

Well, humans aren't currently on the endangered list as far as I am aware. We are (theoretically) capable of supporting the current population of the planet. Armageddon suggests the end of the world, or at least the end of Humanity.

I don't have a problem with the concept that a mass extinction event is underway, but that does not necessarily mean that our species is at risk of extinction or even a massed die-off within the next decade. Us and rats Butterless, the great survivors.

If the thread isn't going in the direction that you wanted then may I suggest you be a little clearer about what that direction is?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:48 / 21.09.06

I don't think I necessarily believe any of the stuff I get to see...nor am i surprised by any of it, or the fact that the visionary realms reflect the material world and vice versa. Nor that it is necessarily likely to be a sudden occurence, if at all...nor, to be fair, am I scared...wrong word, for sure.

Well done with the bio-diesel mob-home, btw, I'm most envious.

It's probably me - it really may well be - but I do get the impression that some responders in this thread just aren't reading it particularly closely or following any of the links. Which is fine...why bother, if you've heard it all before?

Still interested in one of the early posters who believes there is compelling and credible evidence that climate change is a straw man to provide links and evidence of this...all I can find is stuff like this
which seems to be linked to Bob Carter, one of the most media high profile 'sceptics' or 'deniers'...who can be checked out further here

Anyway, if the wind is blowing gently that this is not a discussion likely to develop beyond the notion that I should calm down a bit, ignore the snakes, and get on with building a better world then I'm all for it.

I feel a tree hug coming on.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

10:50 / 21.09.06

Well, humans aren't currently on the endangered list as far as I am aware. We are (theoretically) capable of supporting the current population of the planet. Armageddon suggests the end of the world, or at least the end of Humanity.

I don't have a problem with the concept that a mass extinction event is underway, but that does not necessarily mean that our species is at risk of extinction or even a massed die-off within the next decade. Us and rats Butterless, the great survivors.

Brrr. You really do talk like a scientist,a properly Evil One, sometimes. And people wonder why the finger is often pointed at 'technocrats'...?

If the thread isn't going in the direction that you wanted then may I suggest you be a little clearer about what that direction is?

Saul Goode pwns this thread!

11:12 / 21.09.06

And people wonder why the finger is often pointed at 'technocrats'...?

Do they? Is that a finger of blame or of joy?

E. Coli from the Milky Way

11:29 / 21.09.06

Ehm, excuse me for the interruption: have i read in anyware of this topic that anyone thinks that an invasion of astral entities could happen? Has anyone checked Cassiopaean's ideas about this --about a wave of consciousness that carries different kinds of intelligence?

Yeah, at a first look they seem to be a new age channeling cult, but, if they are, they are a very critical one (but maybe it is designed that way to attract critical people) ...

what are your ideas about it?

11:53 / 21.09.06

Has anyone checked Cassiopaean's ideas about this

Hah, wow. I've not heard that name mentioned here before. I read some of that stuff a while back, and it was some of the most...well, far out material that I've ever read. If they're channeling entities that are (their future selves as far as I remember.) speaking the truth, then we really are in for the wild ride.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:59 / 21.09.06

IMO, Butterless, it's the scientific community more than anyone else that's trying to alert the world to the threat of environmental disaster.

trouser the trouserian

12:04 / 21.09.06

Couple of Links:

Cassiopaea.org FAQ

and a "survivor's" website: The Cassiopaean Cult

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:14 / 21.09.06

Once you have watched 'Z for Zachariah' and 'When the Wind Blows' as a child and lived the fear, dreamed the dreams of nuclear war every night then nothing can scare you like that anymore. The situation the world is in now - to me it feels like nothing compared to truly believing that any day now the world was going to end.

And I did believe that.

Yeah, I know that feeling- add to those movies some scary movies they showed at church about the rapture and you get one plagued-by-nightmares child.

I've never quite rid myself of that, but it's more in a dull sense. I imagine when it happens, among all the fear of death and physical pain and stuff, part of my brain will be going "ah, THERE you are. Thought you were due in the 80s".

12:27 / 21.09.06

This whole apocalypse thing is very difficult to talk about because it inevitably ends up being very vague. I mean, what's really going to happen, if anything? What's the scenario? No more oil? New ice age? Alien invasion?
I think a large part of the anxiety comes from the fact that we don't know what will happen, although we can see that things are indeed going to change.

With regard to the idea of a massive die-off, I'm convinced, like Evil Scientist, that humanity will survive. Regardless of the scenario, we'll make it. Individually, however, we might be in for a bumpy ride. But that's always been true, hasn't it.

Like I said, I think it's difficult to say anything intelligent, so I'll just stop here.

Unconditional Love

13:27 / 21.09.06

Green peace founder debunks myths I had actually watched a documentary with this guy speaking but i cant find it on google video at present.

This is an extract from the article - *****Extremist groups share a common perception about the world, Moore said. They are anti-science, anti-technology, anti-trade, anti-globalization - not just free trade, but all trade. He said people who embrace extremist views and philosophies believe all large machines are inherently evil, and - worse - science is used to justify positions "that actually have nothing to do with science." Moore believes these viewpoints are naive, including the oft-stated wish to return to a "Garden of Eden." How ironic, he said, that these same people use cell phones, laptops and jet planes as the main tools of their trade.*****

I will be back with other sources that i can remember from the elusive documentary.

13:47 / 21.09.06

That's a really good article. Nice one Slackula.

Henningjohnathan

13:48 / 21.09.06

If you could just point out where I've done that, it might help...

Are you really expecting me to believe that the post below was not meant to be in any way sarcastic and dismissive.

I...could...say...that...yes...in as much as...I...am...alive and...here...and not burned up or drowned...or squashed...and it is fun...

Good, er, point.

Also -

And, sorry, at the risk of appearing brusque, if not downright offensive and rude, but can you answer the questions I raised about your posts, please? (The people and the general urges question, first...). If you were just being anecdotal that's fine...you think something just, well, because that's what you think. You have to think something, right?

The “general” urges question seemed more rhetorical since the dismissive part prior to it was your primary point. It didn’t seem to me you really wanted an answer. And I answered your second question which indicated you didn’t really understand my post anyway. If there is an apocalypse life will be hard for everyone who goes through it.

As far as who are the people who on some level desire an apocalypse, well, there’s you for one.

From your initial post:
My mate, who is Jewish, is moving to Israel, for, in his own words 'front row seats when it (Armageddon) really starts in earnest'. Which is quite amusing and possibly a great idea.

It sounds like you are treating this as some kind of entertainment. Here in Los Angeles, that’s exactly how we look at massive wildfires and discuss the prospect of a city destroying Earthquake. It's a cool idea until it happens, but even then, year later, all I hear about the '94 Quake was how it "brought us together." My grandparents looke fondly back at the Great Depression.

Of the pre-millennial Crhistians here in the US, I’d say the majority of them are looking forward to the end of the world (of course, watching it from the sidelines after The Rapture). Apocalypticians seem to simply want there to be some sort of collapse to prove that they were right.

Meanwhile, the apocalypse isn’t coming; it’s here - Iraq, Lebanon, New Orleans, Sudan – and it’s happened before – two World Wars, various genocides from Armenia to Bosnia. Do we downgrade those until the “real” apocalypse hits? They don’t count because our world didn’t end?

13:50 / 21.09.06

Seems there are a few different issues here:

Are humans fucking up the environment in a way that will cause cataclysmic change?

My vote: probably.

But, as other posters have observed, I think the cataclysm will come slowly (more floods, more cancer, more droughts, more typhoons, more Katrinas, more Bhopals, more Chernobyls), and humanity as a whole will adapt.

Rich people from First World countries, for example, will find places to go -- even if New York eventually ends up underwater.

Too bad if you're among the other people who get fucked.

Will there be some sort of disaster (nuclear, environmental, the Antichrist, ravening hordes of zombies) which causes the deaths of most of the people in the world and requires the rest to live in a classic, Mad Max-style post-Apocalyptic world?

My vote: probably not.

Not sure what else to say about this, really.

Will there be some sort of "singularity" that totally and radically transforms humanity in a way that's entirely unimaginable now?

My vote: that sure would be interesting.

(Assuming that it was like Hesse's Magic Theatre or the end of Greg Bear's "Blood Music," rather than an eternity of Hellraiser).

But I'm not holding my breath for the techno-pagan version of the Rapture.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

13:58 / 21.09.06

Henningjohnathon - now we are on sarcastic and dismissive, which are not quite the same as defensive and deliberately offensive are they?

I thought your, er, point, was..well, pointless. Still is. I thought I 'pointed' this out rather well actually. What I wrote was a reflection of my brain's slow process

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:01 / 21.09.06

Meanwhile, the apocalypse isn’t coming

Great. Glad someone is so sure.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:08 / 21.09.06

who on some level desire an apocalypse, well, there’s you for one.

Oooh. Dr. Lecter, I presume. How very perspicacious. Where will you turn your microscope next?

The problem with that is, you mentioned 'most people', not 'me'...care to substantiate your evidence or just, you know, admit that it was anecdotal?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:11 / 21.09.06

The “general” urges question seemed more rhetorical since the dismissive part prior to it was your primary point. It didn’t seem to me you really wanted an answer. And I answered your second question which indicated you didn’t really understand my post anyway. If there is an apocalypse life will be hard for everyone who goes through it.

You seem to have a great deal of difficulty making any actual point though, don't you?

Do you consider 'If there is an Apocalypse life will be hard for everyone who goes through it' to be worth taking the time to type out?

Hence my suspicion that you simply feel you should have an opinion, even if only to demonstrate that you don't seem to really have one that relates to the abstract and first post in this thread beyond Stating The Bleeding Obvious to All but Unicellular Organisms.

14:15 / 21.09.06

Does anyone know who famously said "Every generation thinks they are the last"?

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

14:17 / 21.09.06

Final word from me : many thanks for the varied contributions to this thread.

Had a few PM chinwags with certain Tempular folks, and fully realise this thread is a bit of a stinker without a whole load of exposition I haven't the ability to go into here. So - apologies for steaming in half-loaded and doing a chaoflux23...and apologies for bailing out now.

We seem to have sorted it though. Sleep easy.

Please resume your non-apocalyptic activities forthwith.

14:21 / 21.09.06

But I'm not holding my breath for the techno-pagan version of the Rapture.

I'm not even holding my breath for the techno-pagan version of Wonder Woman.
(Joss your comics are great and all but I needs me the moving pictures too)

Though I remember talking to my Nana about how radically the world had changed in her lifetime. She was born in the 1920's lived in rural New England and passed away in 2002. She felt like the 'world' of her childhood had been replaced. In that sense some apoca's have gone down in cyclical replacements of reality. Worlds end, new ones begin all in seemless adaptation.

I believe the desire for the End is really just a manifestation for the desire for massive change. Few predictions end with a total dead stop but rather a massive shift. Right now as Summer's heat ends the Autumn beguiles us with romantic leaf strewn nights. We fear and yet welcome the chill frost of Winter knowing it carries the promise of blossom filled Spring. Most of us live in cultures with seasonal patterns that dictate rest and action in turns. To project this pattern onto the fast turmoil of modern living makes a sort of sense. We crave the rest after the end of Progress as much as a tourist town waits for off season.

Again I'd rather we as a species grow out of our destructve shitty habits through choice rather than having our mistakes send us back to square one. If I could shape an Apocalypse it would be the still morning one has after a heavy binge weekend when one realizes they've been acting like a total idiot and the party is over, now to start living.

15:50 / 21.09.06

Sorry I haven't tuned into this thread before now.

I've got some homework for you, DBLG/Butterless, but I'm not next to my bookshelf right now.

Here: this might do, but I'm not sure.

The idea being that one traditional theological approach to the Book of Revelation is that it's not a prophecy of something that is happening or about to happen -- that's not really what "prophecy" means in a biblical context. It's an ongoing process that surrounds us all the time.

The Book of Revelation, in this view, is something akin to the Tibetan Book of the Dead written in allegory -- but because of the way allegory works, it's also about things other than personal death, and is more about the way time works and where society sits in regard to things divine.

Allegory, of course, can also be about actual historical events, but it places the true significance of these events elsewhere.

You say: But you hardly need second sight to notice that things are slightly different to millenial tension at the turn of the first, being a convenient doomsday date or something.

But I read this as an eternal truth. We are always waning. Destruction is always on its way. I'm not merely saying, "Oh, there've always been people who say the world is ending, but look, here we are!" I'm saying I they're right -- the world IS ending. But it's ALWAYS ending.

Here: the very first entry in Gracian's Manual, written in the 1600s --
Everything is at its Acme;
especially the art of making one's way in the world. There is more required nowadays to make a single wise man than formerly to make Seven Sages, and more is needed nowadays to deal with a single person than was required with a whole people in former times.

Everything is accelerating. Everything is now at its acme. Everything is declining. Everything was always simpler back then.

In another way, what is this, if not a restatement in concrete terms of the ultimate noble truth of Buddha: the nature of existence is change?

15:58 / 21.09.06

P.S. -- Imagine what Balthasar Gracian, a monk from 17th century Spain, would make of the 1800s. Trench warfare. The rebirth of paganism. A new world power responsible to neither church nor king. Machine guns. Steam engines. The waltz became legal.

Laughable now, but sheer evil from his perspective. Mass death, licentiousness.

17:07 / 21.09.06

....the fairies are always leaving & the aliens are always arriving....

18:06 / 21.09.06

Faelians will destroy the earth in ten days. You have been warned, lock up your daughters!

18:36 / 21.09.06

The Book of Revelation, in this view, is something akin to the Tibetan Book of the Dead written in allegory

You know that 59% of Americans believe the prophecies in Revelation will come to pass, right? They don't think it's an allegory.

Grauniad

18:42 / 21.09.06

I know that the belief in the end times and the apocalypse is chronically hardwired into the human psyche. (I say "I know" as a substitute for "I believe" because I think that this thread is slight proof.)

However, reading this thread has rekindled my believe in the titanic neverending bout;

Evolution versus Eschaton!

For everything that happens that seems apocalyptic, the human race should be learning rather than battening down for the next one. New Orleans was and continues to be tragic - but the hope is that the rebuild will make it bigger, stronger and more resistant.

It's akin to the theory that broken bones mend stronger around the area of the break; if a bone was broken and mended repeatedly, would it be stronger than an unbroken bone?

I believe in the End Times. I don't worry any longer (I used to) that they may just be around the corner, because I have a tiny spark of faith (non-religious) in the concept that humans will take the punches and figure out a way to heal the bruises afterwards.

The basic idea is that reactive is better in some ways than pro-active, because we can only learn from what are currently massive social and environmental problems.

Or should we be solving before occurrence? Pre-emptive measures against predicted problems?

I'm off now to ponder.

20:38 / 21.09.06

You know that 59% of Americans believe the prophecies in Revelation will come to pass, right? They don't think it's an allegory.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the four viewpoints in that annotated Revelation in my amazon.com link correspond roughly to:
* millennial (pre- and post-, the "Left Behind" crowd),
* amillenial/millenarian (the book is a literal description of heavenly events, thus not tied to history/the world),
* historical allegory (the book poetically describes/critiques events that took place around 70 AD),
* and the idealist/spiritual reading above (can be called a kind of millenarianism).

I haven't read that particular book, so I can't say for sure.

By far, the millennial view is the easiest one to grasp, especially for those already inclined to a literal interpretation of scripture. It's the hardest to swallow, what with beasts with 10 horns on seven heads and all, but the easiest to make sense of.

There's some interesting material about belief in world-changing events in wikipedia's "millenarianism" entry. Notice that it lists Rasta, Marxism, Nostradamus, Heaven's Gate, Transhumanism and the Taiping Rebellion (you *must* read that entry; history is always stranger than fiction) in the same ideological category.

Anyway, I was raised Catholic and trained to read the Bible as poetry (and thus Truth). The Apocalypse, we didn't even concern ourselves with. That's all God's business -- leave it up to Him.

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