Selling Tomorrows

Are We Done with Apocalyptic Predictions?

Over at the World Future Society's site, I take a look at whether closing the books on 2012 means we're done with doomsday prophesies: "With 2012 Over, Is the Apocalypse Dead?"  

The short answer is "no."  But an exploration of why people like to believe in things like the (supposed) Mayan prediction reveals a lot about our culture and how we might tackle the legitimate threats ahead.  

Enjoy! 

Don't Miss iO9's "Very Short History of the Rapture"

Interesting post over at iO9 about where the idea of the Rapture originated, how it spread and evolved and which churches do and do not believe in it.  The idea has gained significant traction in pop culture due to the "Left Behind" series. 

 

Hilarious: Twitter's Fail Notice Chalks Problems up to the End of the World

Just tried to login to Hootsuite and got this fail notification.  Check out the aweome reasons for why something went wrong.  Whoever came up with that idea deserves a high-five, and whoever signed off on doing it deserves a handshake. 

 

Did Evolution Prime us for Dystopic Fantasies?

A contributor to the "anxiety" column in the NY Times makes a fascinating argument for why people buy into dystopic fantasies.  Tim Kreider, the cartoonist and creator of "The Pain -- When Will it End?", writes: 

"Natural selection has made us hypervigilant, obsessively replaying our mistakes and imagining worst-case scenarios. And the fact that we’ve eliminated almost all of the immediate threats from our environment, like leopards and Hittites, has only made us even more jittery, because we’re now constantly anticipating disasters that are never going to happen: the prowler/rapist/serial killer lurking in the closet, a pandemic of Ebola/Bird Flu/Hantavirus, the imminent fascist/socialist/zombie takeover."

The rest of the column is a medidation on the benefits of exposing yourself to physical danger to get the brain focused on something real.  Good read. 

IF Clark found dystopias broke into the mainstream after WWI.  There was very little of it before that point, though certainly prophesies about the end of the world pre-date that by a couple thousand years. Has anyone seen arguments made along Kreider's lines elsewhere? 

 

Flight from the City: "What the #%&@! is Wrong with our Economy?

You have to hand it to Borsodi. He looks at the economic devastation around him in 1933, people walking around shell shocked and penniless, and outright rejects it.  Where everyone sees a savage business cycle, he sees a savage economic model.  Where others queue for breadlines, he buys farmland to grow his own food.  Absolutists are easy to admire, of course, but unlike most of them, Borsodi doesn't substitute ideology for logic.  He embraces the scientific model and applies it over and over until he finds a way out of his mess.

Borsodi makes three arguments in the book. The first is that an economic system that can't eliminate unemployment is immoral and impractical.  Snip:

..."all these victims of unemployment are alike in this respect, that they are periodically unable to support themselves and their families through no fault of their own because of their dependence upon what they earn as a cog in some part of the complex machinery of our factory-dominated civilization."

 

David Brooks on Americans' "Eschatological" Faith in the Future

What?  You don't know what the heck "Eschatological" means either?  Let's ask our friends at Wikipedia: 

"...a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world.)

Snip:

"this eschatological faith in the future has motivated generations of Americans, just as religious faith motivates a missionary. Pioneers and immigrants endured hardship in the present because of their confidence in future plenty. Entrepreneurs start up companies with an exaggerated sense of their chances of success. The faith is the molten core of the country's dynamism...The anxiety in America is caused by the vague sense that they have what we're supposed to have. It's not the per capita income, which the Chinese may never have at our level. It's the sense of living with baubles just out of reach. It's the faith in the future, which is actually more important...And it becomes obvious by comparison [to China] just how far the U.S. has drifted from its normal future-centered orientation and how much this rankles. (Read the full column here.)

On the Anniversary of Berlin Wall Fall, Why we Miss Existential Threats

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has a lot of people thinking existentially, and their insights illuminate some interesting aspects of how we think about the past and future.

First, check out this fascinating op-ed in today's NY Times by Ross Douthat.  He asks why aren't we celebrating our victory more, and then points to a deep seated need for people to feel under threat in order to spur moral behavior.

"Twenty years later, we still haven't come to terms with the scope of our deliverance...we keep returning to the idea that liberal society is just as vulnerable as it was before the Berlin Wall came down...These paranoias suggest a civilization that's afraid to reckon with its own apparent permanence. The end of history has its share of discontents - anomie, corruption, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." And it may be that the only thing more frightening than the possibility of annihilation is the possibility that our society could coast on forever as it is - like a Rome without an Attila to sack its palaces, or a Nineveh without Yahweh to pass judgment on its crimes.

Why are People Attracted to Dystopias? Ask an Author who Writes Them

io9 has a great guest post by Jeff Carlson, the best selling author of the Plague Year series, on why people like dystopic fiction.  Considering that in the next month we've got 2012 and The Road coming out (not to mention an oversupply of zombie movies), the topic is both timely and timeless. 

But there's also a flip side worth exploring...there's a definite pattern over the past few hundred years (read related dystopia and utopia posts here) where people tend to think either one extreme or other will characterize the future.  Rarely do they think life will pretty much continue on as it always has.  You can see this best in books going back to the 1800s where the Forwards invariably start off saying "in this time of great change..."  and then proceed to list the explosive mix of technology + moral success/failure will result in a new golden or dark age.

District 9: Just...don't even...save the $10 bucks...awful

Even the worst movies about the future have something to teach us about how we think of tomorrow.  Or so I thought before seeing District 9.  Save yourself the $10 and imagine a sickeningly trite film  that explores how inhumane people can be.  I put the trailer below, but only because I'm committed to being a good blogger and including a visual in each post.  Not because you should watch it.  

Slate: 144 Ways America Could End

Josh Levin at Slate has put together a really creative widget that explores 144 ways America could end.  Designed as a tribute to Alexander Demandt, who, as Levin reports: 

"...set out in the 1980s to collect every theory ever given for why Rome fell. The final tally: 210, including attacks by nomads on horseback, blood poisoning, decline of Nordic character, homosexuality, outflow of gold, and vaingloriousness."

Will the fault lie in technology? Our culture? Or maybe it'll be animals (what, every zoo keeper leaves the gate unlocked one night???).  How about a combination? The widget lets you select multiple screens to arrive at just the right kind of apocolypse.  I bet this tool is spreading like wildfire among hollywood writers right now.