Why I am Not an Apocalyptist

Because it's self-fulfilling

There are two meanings of “apocalypse.” I prefer the literal one from the Greek before John and an “evolution of sense.”

From Middle English apocalips, from Latin apocalypsis, from Ancient Greek ἀποκάλυψις (apokálupsis, “revelation”), literally meaning "uncovering", from ἀπό (apó, “back, away from”) and καλύπτω (kalúptō, “I cover”).

The sense evolution to "catastrophe, end of the world" stems from the depiction of such events in the biblical Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse of (i.e. Revelation to) John.

Source: Wiktionary

The literal meaning is to uncover or “reveal.” Compare the Greek aletheia, which means literally to un-forget. (The Lethe is the river in Hades, which when one crosses it at death, one enters oblivion.) Both are truth-terms, knowledge terms, not metaphysical ones having to do with a changing structure of reality, involving destruction, catastrophe, End. The evolution of sense of the word, adding the latter connotation is due to the revelation to John in the Bible. The content of what was revealed to John was the End.

Apocalypticism as a religious or political or ecological movement is about “seeing” (wrongly, in my view) that “the End is nigh.” It’s accompanied by a fevered admonishment to anyone who will listen: “if you don’t reform your ways immediately!” That is, the seer sees and wills the other to conform. There is so extreme a degree of self-surety and self-righteousness involved as to be unquestioning of self and unquestionably condemnatory of another, whoever is deemed to be at fault.

Anti-Trump apocalyptic

Anti-Deep State apocalyptic (Anti-liberal, Anti-Democrat)

Anti-Climate Change apocalyptic

War apocalyptic

Race, gender, ethnic apocalyptic

Economic apocalyptic (“growth or else”; “degrowth or else”)

The problem with all of these is that when all is Absolute Crisis, any means becomes justified and necessary to stop the threat. At all costs. And that, in itself, is also apocalyptic, in the bad sense.

In the Absolute, at the End, it is too late for talking. No more discussion. No more speaking. No more listening. No more waiting patiently. No more debate. No more argument. The apocalyptist knows she is utterly and absolutely right, and poised at the juncture of dire peril to existence, to reality, to sanity. It will be the End if one is not heard, believed, and obeyed.

Except the problem is… reasonable people — to the extent there are any left, and I believe there are many, many left (although they may be all too silent) — do differ. This is a sign that we are not in fact in the apocalypse. Where reasonable differences remain — where difference can still be accepted as reasonable — we have not yet entered the Totality that justifies terrorism against the Enemy, whoever They are.

To avoid the apocalypse, to avoid the Totality, is to respect as wide a range of reasonable difference as humanly possible, even when it seems unreasonable to you.

If people were really afraid of apocalypse, they would not create apocalypse. They would hold defiantly onto a classical liberal middle. This is why defenders of that thread-worn early modern arrangement still exist today.

If people were really afraid of apocalypse, they would shift to the other meaning of the term and seek “revelation,” enlightenment, the uncovering of reality from the overlay of catastrophic emotion. Let go the anger, fear, and passions run amok.

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Now I grant that it’s possible that situations can become so dire — as they did multiple times in the 20th century, and possibly at many other points in history — that we really do start to live in the Totality, where reason, thought, freedom, speech, action, life itself, personhood itself, humanity, nature — are all in actual danger of destruction.

It may be that talk, talk, patiently waiting, listening, discussion, toleration becomes an excuse, a brainwash, a fatal delay, a pandering to the evil afoot in the world. Even so, to stop thinking, to stop listening, to be so assured that one demonizes the other and cancels the Enemy, is to practice (anti-)apocalypse. Better to move to action and continue to think, speak, wait, persevere, be patient, be hopeful, and look for and believe in the best of everyone.

Come what may.

Temperance, Piero del Pollaiuolo (at the Uffizi gallery)