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Mar. 21st, 2006 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sen_no_ongakuI was thinking about this post on my occasional predilection for viewing the world in survivalist terms, and I'm curious as to whether considering the possibility of, and half-seriously preparing for, a brutal dystopian post-apocalypse world is particular to the Atomic generation or if it's been around for longer. Put another way, for how long has the ability to conceive of living to see humanity's works destroyed -- and having to cope with its aftermath -- been relatively common? Is it as common as I seem to assume it is?
I'm not really talking about religious eschatonology*, the intervention of some supernatural force to effect some sort of ontological world-changing event, although modern-day expectations of such a disintegration might simply be a new way of expressing those impulses. I'm talking the collapse of the nation-state down to the city-state level, maybe even lower, as the result of human action.
Eh?
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*which, as I understand, was fairly common in Western culture until the discovery of geological time around the 18th century rendered the long-standing belief that Second Coming was imminent markedly (thought not completely) less compelling.
I'm not really talking about religious eschatonology*, the intervention of some supernatural force to effect some sort of ontological world-changing event, although modern-day expectations of such a disintegration might simply be a new way of expressing those impulses. I'm talking the collapse of the nation-state down to the city-state level, maybe even lower, as the result of human action.
Eh?
___
*which, as I understand, was fairly common in Western culture until the discovery of geological time around the 18th century rendered the long-standing belief that Second Coming was imminent markedly (thought not completely) less compelling.
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From Balsamic Dragon
Date: 2006-03-22 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-22 03:30 pm (UTC)Close...
Date: 2006-03-22 03:45 pm (UTC)The field of eschatology is very much alive, it's simply that the definition of apocalyptic has gone from the Catholic "end of world and timespace as we know it" type of apocalyptic thought back to the original post-Messianic definition of apocalyptic, which is more interested in the resolution of all things spiritually (typically at the time of a person's corporeal death) than in a particular moment in time at which all things will be resolved simultaneously for all people.
In any case, while the concepts are not dismissed, the idea of the Revelatory judgment day is somewhat less important in modern eschatology than it has been in the past, and the field is more rich than either the definition you are using (a very common one), or the dictionary.com entry, suggests.
Re: Close...
Date: 2006-03-22 07:16 pm (UTC)Re: Close...
Date: 2006-03-22 10:06 pm (UTC)The pronunciation of "scatological" and "eschatological" are sadly
similar.
Re: Close...
Date: 2006-03-22 10:06 pm (UTC)Re: Close...
Date: 2006-03-23 02:15 pm (UTC)So if faith + philosophy = hand-waving, then I suppose you're right.
Re: Close...
Date: 2006-03-23 10:27 pm (UTC)Anonymous commentor + grand, vague, slightly pompous statements = you have no credibility.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-23 03:27 am (UTC)