Tag Archives: apocalypse

Apocalypse Now: Sandy Dominates My Weltanschauung

6 Nov

Big word that: Weltanschauung. It means world view, a comprehensive top-to-bottom, right-to-left, inside-and-outside account of the world. Well, hurricane Sandy changed my world. She deserves a Big Word.

Now, physically, me and my stuff are now OK. But as I type this I hear noise created by the generator at the firehouse behind my building. The street it faces doesn’t have electric power. That firehouse is my polling place today. I assume the generator will power the electronic voting machine.

Tomorrow we’re supposed to get an ordinary winter storm, one of those storms that’re variously delightful, if you like snow, or merely irritating if you don’t. But this one is coming on top of Sandy, and Jersey City has not even remotely recovered from her. So the impact of this new storm could be harmful, especially for those still without power.

Given this, it is thus something of a shock when I go online to the various places I haunt and discuss and find that those discussions aren’t dominated by Sandy. Why not? Because most folks don’t live in an area that’s been crushed by Sandy. She doesn’t dominate their Weltanschuung.

For me and my neighbors, we got a taste of the apocalypse. For the rest of the world, life goes on.

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America’s apocalypse obsession – Salon.com

18 Jul

A cultural grief process?

The 2012 myth has intrigued the fictional world, as well: last year, “Melancholia”, the latest film from Danish director Lars von Trier used it as its backdrop, and during the 2012 Superbowl there was even an ad that borrowed the conceit to sell Chevrolets. Barring a handful of people running Mayan apocalypse Web sites, there is a strange, smirking subtext to those who cite 2012, an overarching sense of cynicism that seems almost gleeful that we could be destined for our comeuppance. Maybe it’s simply because everyone believes that they will be among the handful of survivors, but humanity really seems to hate itself—which is fortuitous, since we will probably be responsible for our own demise.

via America’s apocalypse obsession – Salon.com.

America’s endless apocalypse – History – Salon.com

27 Feb

For some, the lack of drama or disaster that accompanied Y2K justified placing most discussions of Armageddon on the yonder side of the grassy knoll, in tinfoil-hat territory. This line of thinking has proven disastrous to efforts to address numerous pressing issues — global warming being chief among them. Yet for many others, Y2K turned obsessing about the apocalypse into a national pastime; by 2001, the expectation that a major event could lead to the rapid unraveling of modern society had moved firmly from the realm of the conspiracy into the suburban American living room, where it has stayed ever since.

via America’s endless apocalypse – History – Salon.com.