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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.
