Or, on the Risks and Profit of the Apocalypse
Remember the Gods are Mortal
A curious feature of the human spirit is that it ever imagines the End of the World. Ancient and modern pagans always anticipated either a far-off Ragnarok in which the gods prtecting the Order of the World are defeated in a grand battle, or actively imagined their gods fighting the Last Battle every single day, humanity igorantly basking in the distant glow of their fiery weapons. Modern scientifc thought is held in the grip of terror oozing from possible scenarios (manmade or naturally occuring) under which the conditions enabling human life would cease to exist on Earth. This coming destruction is usually either final or circular, or, as the Hindu tradition would have it, spiral - the universe destroying and re-creating itself again and again, but each time it comes closer and closer to its final fate of rejoining Brahma's singularity.
This instinct is, at its base, a positive one, it gives us the same moral guidance as old "Memento Mori" but on the grander, collective sacle. Not only are we mortal and therefore should be wary of beguiling hubris, but our tribes, polities, civilization, even Creation herself, share in our mortality, therefore we should not lay aside individual hubris merely to embrace the collective one.
However, like any human instinct, especially those of the philiosophical kind, the truth underlying the memory of the death of the world is easily corrupted, it's message lost and distorted, letting vice grow in virtue's stead.
TO BE CONTINUED
Comments