Doomsday

“The Road” is an irritating read.  I’m not partial to this (post?) modern, pared-down style, with barely a comma or quotation mark in sight, missing apostrophes, and in general, almost stream of consciousness style that makes it hard to make sense of who is talking.  I gather this is the point of such writing.  It leaves a dry, bitter aftertaste.  This probably means the book’s affect is effective.  If the form gnaws, then the content bites.

The content of the novel, though, is not particularly sensational.  Simply, it’s a listing of the everyday lives of father and son as they make their way to the south:  Breakfast.  Lunch.  Supper.  Sleep and repeat.  Every detail of their existence is painfully amplified – or reduced – to the small tasks: build a fire, warm the food, find the cart. Each is rendered as though each decision will determine whether they will live or die.

These acts of survival are carried out by two unnamed people, trekking through a wildnerness amid traces of a civilization past.  The anonymity creates distance.  But these nameless, faceless people could also be me, this could be you.  This could be the story of the Others — the Bad People.  But in this climate it is every man for himself — and his child, maybe.

The conversation in the novel is reduced to the essentials, and it’s often  ambiguous who is talking.  The father is constantly concerned that the boy is not talking. It’s as though speech/communication is the last quality that allows them to hold on to some humanness.  Much of this conversation revolves around questions of mortality.  The boy is always afraid they are going to die. At the same time, he sometimes wishes he were dead and reunited with the mother. (Freud would have a field day!)  Why do they want to stay alive when there is nothing left? In a way I was angry at the wife for abandoning her family but maybe she was right after all.  If they have each other, do they have enough?

This seems to be a theme in apocalyptic narrative: the idea that humanity is worth saving for the few worthwhile human connections that exist.  We’ve seen this in Watchmen with Dr. Manhattan and in The Albertine Notes.  And I don’t mean this  in terms of the Elect, though that is a likely source for the idea.

I do not entirely dislike the novel.  There were tender moments and images of beauty against the stark, bleak background.  This too is probably a feature of the novels themes.  But again I return to the question: against such devastating nothingness, no redeeming ending, a forever stretching out endlessly — of what purpose are these tiny connections, who cares and what does it all mean?  This novel cries out for this type of reflection. It seems needy.  I haven’t yet finished it (I’m halfway through) and am looking forward to blogging about the END.

I’ve been long interested in how we construct reality, but I’ve mostly thought of it in psychological or technical (not technological terms) –  like how we project a persona or how images or words in film or literature create meaning.  Obviously technology has or will soon have the ability to create possibilities of experiences that were not previously available.  Here, I use  the word “experience” as opposed to “reality.” But the question of what is reality is at the base of much of what we have read for this week.  Further, I find it most interesting to cast this question of reality into apocalyptic terms.

Quinby calls the social domination allowed by technology “technopression” and argues that it presents and seeks to control power, truth and morality in an apocalyptic mode.  Technology allows for the dream of transcendence of human limitations,  a millennialist dream she says.  Indeed, the idea of transcendence of human form and constraints squares well with ideas in BOR about the impurities of flesh and the promise of freedom from sin once the end arrives.  It’s also the 144,000 undefiled by sex who will be saved.  But stepping aside from this obvious reference, technopression’s problems are more insidious.  Programmed perfection as Quinby calls it, or Vinge’s “utraintelligent machine,” both seek to change a current reality into a new, sanitized one.

With the advent of the Singularity, which Vinge casts as an Apocalyptic event , will come a change in time or nature of intelligence.  He argues that more detailed knowledge of science takes away from the fantasy of what is possible.  Vinge also points out that truly productive work will become the “domain of steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity.”  IA creates cynical elite, which corresponds to an apocalyptic mode of electism, where only a select few are worthy of redemption.  But Vinge also points out that we are the initiators of the inevitable.  Thus, the Singularity raises issue about free will and determinism.

In Vinge’s post-Singularity world, pieces of ego can be merged/copied and “size of self awareness can grow or shrink to fit nature of problems under consideration.”  The SQUID device promises exactly this new reality, one which Quinby sees as having an alienating effect.

Serendipity – On my way to class this morning, I noticed a table set up on Bedford Avenue outside of the Brooklyn College gates.  I stopped and looked and — lo and behold, signs and pamphlets and books discussing the Messiah. I usually ignore these displays.  Today I stared, then asked the people behind the table a bunch of Leah-style questions.  Here’s what I gathered:

Jessica was born a Southern Baptist.  She became interested in Judaism when she came to New York and met a Jewish friend.  She learned Hebrew and studied the Old Testament.  She even considered converting to Judaism, but that was years ago.  Now she keeps many Jewish holidays and a version of kosher.  She believes in the Jewish god but also in Jesus. She supports the right of Israel to exist.   In fact, she is very pro-Israel.  I asked her if this is related to the need for Jews to be in control of Jerusalem for the Second Coming.  She squirmed a little bit but I think her answer was yes.

Doug, the man behind the campaign, is also not Jewish.  He pays for everything.  He also spoke Hebrew.   They go to college campuses and try to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment.

I took two fliers they had on the table.  Both have the Hebrew text from Daniel and Isaiah and other parts of the Bible.  There are no New Testament references.  There is no overt reference  to Jesus, only a title on the top of one page that says “Who is this speaking of?”

I told them I attended an Orthodox Jewish high school.  He told me I must have gotten an excellent education. I agreed.  (The school is accredited by the same agency that accredits Dalton and Horace Mann, etc.)  I also told them that I was taking a class about the Apocalypse and End Times.  I asked her if she had read the Left Behind series.  She hadn’t.  She also does not like to call herself “evangelical Christian.” I asked.

I would have been late for an exam so I had to run.  Otherwise,  I would have stayed and asked more questions.  You can take a look at the Web site and tell me what you think.  Prof. Quinby, I am particularly interested in your opinion.

http://gotmessiah.com/

It was an interesting experience.  I’ll bring the fliers in to class so we can all look at them.

A Lecture by Slavoj Zizek. “Anti-Semitism, Anti-Semite and Jew” European Graduate School, 2009

I was thinking about posting this before I read McAlister’s piece.  But now, having read it, I see even more connections to what we’ve been discussing.  The lecture is long, so I’ve only posted the end parts where Zizek summarizes his argument.

The McAlister piece brings together many of the issues we raised last week in class.  I’m glad that we read this after the class because it really crystallized how I understand and think about Left Behind.  There are many things I wanted to discuss in this blog post, but in the interest of brevity, I’ll choose one and leave the rest for class.

She reads the novels as placing importance on the roles of the Jews, specifically as interfaith relations are important in regards to imperialism.  The U.S. has always been imperialistic, this attitude/policy has just been called by another name (e.g.; “making the world safe for democracy.”) Democracy (as opposed to governments based on religious law) is a pursuit of liberalism.  But McAlister says that this sort of  liberalism is also rooted in Christian evangelism in the way that it seeks to convert others to their sect.

In the lecture I posted, Slavoj Zizek makes the claim that liberalism and fundamentalism are a false conflict and that fundamentalism can actually grow out of liberalism.  (I’m not sure if I understood his entire lecture correctly.)  Zizek also talks about a change in anti-Semitism that occurred during pre-Nazi years.  He says that previously anti-Semites sought to eradicate Jewishness, so conversion was an acceptable alternative.  Then, the concept of a Jew changed to an inherent quality so that physical annihilation was something they desired.  During Hitler’s rule, he and Eichmann considered moving all Jews to another homeland to answer the Jewish Question.  Ultimately, the Final Solution resulted in the Holocaust.  Then, Zizek says, with the founding of Israel in 1948, the attitude changed again.  This changed perception of the Jew from nomadic to established in a homeland and fueled hatred against this new type of Jew.  He says that many Middle Eastern countries (he gives Iran for example) allow Jews to live freely in their country, but antagonize Israel.   And, importantly, Zizek says this is responsible for a new type of anti-Semitism, one directed against Israel.

To connect with our topic of interest – Christian evangelist notions about Israel: McAlister notes the omission of any discussion of American Jews and Palestine or Palestinians  from Left Behind.  About the first she writes: “Jews are instrumental when they matter but they do not matter at all unless they make themselves of interest to God by becoming Israelis.”  About the latter: “the notion of Palesinian is made invisivble, impossible…there is no Palestinian problem on the evangelical map.”  That is: the creation of the state of Israel as opposed to Palestine antagonizes the need for the state to exist for the Second Coming.  Further, McAlister connects this with general U.S. Middle East foreign policy, because the U.S. is largely evangelical Christian.

I came across this yesterday and thought it fit right in with the discussion we had at the end of class, particularly in reference to skepticism as it seeks to break from dualism.

Lynne Layton writes:

John Powers says of Lynch’s [Blue Velvet]  “Such a dichotomy is typical…it would be wrong to criticize Blue Velvet and the others for dramatizing the excluded middle, for not finding alternatives to the extremes of good and evil that give them their spark.  Literary gothicism is distinguished by similar stylization; it does with the territory.  Nevertheless, one suspects these films don’t dramatize alternatives because they can’t imagine alternatives. ”
…

Perhaps the patriarchal dominant is the psychology and politics of this split world, a world with no alternatives to black-and-white thinking because so much vulnerability is kept secret.  As anxiety heightens, splitting intensifies.

—

Briefly – In life-and-death decisions, there are usually (but not always) two options.  In Glorious Appearing, too, there is no middle ground.  A person can either accept or reject creed and therefore be damned or saved.  The Rapture is preceded by great turbulence, likely a time of anxiety, in which the “splitting” Layton talks about is apparent.

Thought/comments?

I do not usually read books of the genre in which Glorious Appearing would be categorized.  However, the book does remind me of another similar style of writing with which I am familiar.  Books written for and by Orthodox Jews have certain similar elements.  At home, I was discouraged from reading these books, their having been dismissed as “not well-written.”  Still, I’ve read my share and am not surprised by the parallels between Glorious Appearing and those books.

My friend works in the Jewish publishing business.  In her opinion, authors are strongly encouraged (at the risk of not being published) to write characters who are “realer than real.”  Children are extra-sweet and super-obedient and parents extra-wise and true guardians of the faith.  More importantly, the issues that are discussed in these didactic, often dogmatic, and moralistic books are always set in stark black-and-white terms.  Further, the antagonist is usually an external force over which the protagonist has no control: life-threatening illness, tragic car accidents, Nazi criminal activity, their parents’ decision to raise them in another faith or tradition.  Since the protagonist is removed from the actions that produce the struggle in the plot, his reaction to this conflict seems removed from his real inner life.  Only the prevailing Orthodox view is upheld and the reader is left with the the taste of artificial sweetener.  Usually the resolution proclaims that the protagonist is upholding the faith for generations and saving the world with his actions.

In Glorious Appearing, Ray and his company endure years of trial over which they seem to have no control.  Still, they are of the faithful, the choice to believe is absolute and unwavering.  In the end, they are rewarded.  The rest of the world waits for them to carry out their mission, watching by television.  Control of the media is often the first method a dictator uses to control a group.

The Left Behind series may speak to a diverse audience but its mission is straightforward – advance the cause, convert the unconverted.  Young and old and members of different sects (not sure about all denomination’s reaction to the story) can identify with the main characters, however unbelievable their unwavering devotion and exaggerated goodness, because the end is a supposed panacea for all the problems this world faces.  For example, the sick and maimed are healed, each is the subject of divine attention – not only does this make belief in Apocalypse palatable and digestible, it reinforces the personal benefits of belief.

That the end of the book is predictable and a story well-known in Christian theology and popular American culture is not counter its immense popularity.  Have not successful film adaptations of famous novels shown this to be valid?  Rather, each medium serves its own function, tells its own variation of the theme, and appeals to its own audience.  We might all know how the story is going to end but that does not diminish the pleasure of the reading.

Wouldn’t we not all be believers if we saw miracles predicted thousands of years ago come true?  Faith alone cannot prove these so-called miracles are not only coincidence?  But at what point can supernatural events no longer be called coincidence? The characters in this story are not concerned that the timing of the seven years since the signing of the pact is not exact.  God has his own concept of timing suffices as explanation for them.

There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics.

-Louis

In Tony Kushner’s America, there are no angels.   The America he presents is a wasteland, land of bigots, racists, class conflicts, traitors, philanderers.

Oh, but there are angels.  Kushner sees the real and fantastic, life and death, heaven and hell, as the same, so as long as we believe in them.  (I realize that I will contradict this later in my writing, so I’ll say that I have not fully fleshed this idea out.) Kushner’s ideas about perception connect with the ideas of cyclical vs. linear time, as we discussed in reference to BOR and most recently “Watchmen”, where events that happen during time are only a matter of perspective. Kushner does not distinguish between the veracity of Prior’s fever-induced vision and Harper’s Valium-induced hallucination. That they cross into the other’s dreams and then later know each other as if they had really met, is something neither of them question. Neither vision is held to be more true to Prior or Harper or to their friends. “It was a dream, no it wasn’t, it really happened, I’m a prophet,” Prior insists. And who is going to argue? That this is a play, where the audience can see the angel onstage, serves to reinforce that what we see is true, and lend sympathy to Prior’s claim.

[This is similar to Daniel’s observation last week about Moore (“he believes imagination and belief are more than mere brain stuff, but maintain tangible reality on some plane”).]

Time gives credibility but also washes away with it the practicality of religion.  Ancient religions are irrelevant (as shown through non-practice) and anything younger than 2,000 years is a “cult.”  Religious practice is a fringe phenomenon, preached by people who don’t really believe, don’t really care, and don’t really know why they are practicing.  Attendant to this discussion are notions of Heaven and Hell and Salvation and Damnation.

The Bible may call homosexuality an abomination, but any Hell that Cohn may face is already a reality in his life.  Cohn says: Pain’s nothing. Life’s pain (1:5).  And further, when Cohn asks Belize what Hell is like:  “Like San Fransisco…” Cohn seems relieved: “A city. Good. I was worried . . . it’d be a garden.” Having just described the worst of the inner-city smut, Belize tells Cohn, “That was Heaven.” (3:5)

All the same, Prior waits for the millenium (?) to bring with it egalitarian society.  The AIDS epidemic may seem like apocalypse, but what comes later will be the true revelation.  AIDS may kill many, but the survivors “will be citizens. The time has come.” Kushner sees the millenium as heralding a grand new era where secrecy and shame are no longer and the living will honor the dead and fulfill their dreams.  At the end of the play, Louis and Ethel Rosenberg say Kaddish for Cohn.  This reminds me of a quote from Sophocles’s Antigone.  About the moral imperative for her to bury her dead brother, Antigone says, “It is the dead, not the living, that make the longest demands.”  In their lifetimes, Cohn and Rosenberg were enemies, Louis hated Cohn too, but after death, some change has taken place.

Kushner also addresses stereotypes in American culture.  Cohn lashes out against labels; Belize asks Louis “what kind of homosexual are you?” because he can’t distinguish purple and mauve; and there is a comment about Prior and his occupation (Are you a hairdresser?).

A closeted gay man, Cohn, vehemently denying and guarding his sexual identity, has only the slightest of sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of young gay men infected and affected by AIDS. men.  When Joe confesses that he has left his wife for a man, Cohn flies into a rage, demanding he never mention this again.  It a jealous rage, the raging of an old sick man, who in his final vulnerable moments, is alone with only his ego and ideation of his power to console him.

Rosen agrees with Stroizer in the sense that she sees apocalypse as being a force by which to establish identity. And she says it is kept alive not only for its inherent value (in religious or moral terms), but also as a commodity: like Stroizer, she points out that apocalypse has been used to comfort people. But more than Stroizer, Rosen argues why apocalyptic theory as “sense-making paradigm” is superior to other theories by which a people could establish themselves in context to their histories.
Apocalypse helps make sense of crises by seeing these as part of an underlying master plan. But, by enumerating those events or states that we perceive as apocalyptic, we highlight those which are imperfect. Rosen believes this functions as a sort of social criticism of society and of apocalyptic thought itself.

“Apocalypse seems at least to accept and perhaps to condone the abdication of personal responsibility for our fate.”

Last week, I mentioned (ever so fleetingly, just like I would be telling you about what I ate for lunch) that I am a self-professed fatalist. Prof. Quinby thought this was interesting in light of fatalism of predestination in Calvinist and that is central to the Fundamentalist Christian belief system and much apocalyptic belief generally.

Does this make me apocalyptic? Belief in some sort of apocalypse is central to Judeo-Christian belief. And, yes, I suppose it does. But more on this later.

It is interesting that Rosen claims that America is not becoming more secularized. The data she cite point to increased religious feeling among young people. These are curious statistics. I don’t find it surprising that this may be true. I just don’t feel that there is a trend toward deeper religiosity in the country, at least as popular American culture is concerned. If anything, pop culture has moved sharply away from religiosity and instead is preaching a loosening of (traditionally religious) morals and dismissal of faith in god. I don’t think this debate is anything new. It’s been around for millennia but the extent to which the church has been separated from the state and establishment is unprecedented.

Another interesting point is that Rosen thinks that apocalypse has nearly universal appeal. While belief in apocalypse may be increased by persecution, it is not a prerequisite, and only perceived persecution or even disruption of normality may suffice.

—
The challenge to apocalyptic thought is what underlies post-modern thinking. The idea is to up-end the traditional “sense-making” paradigms and to rethink long-held systems of moral code.

Tension between perceived world of the narrator and the “real” world of the film, and the destruction of one and creation of the other. Donnie Darko (2001).

Post-modernism – restructuring of time. A return to the cyclical time, to where there are no strict beginnings and endings.

—
Moore — it was not I who decided how the axe would fall, it was you.
– same idea in film; implicating the viewer (favorite of Hitchcock and others) you were thinking same thing

I read an article in Wired magazine (issue 17.10) about a still operational Soviet nuclear launch plan that would activate even after an apocalypse.  Apparently, Wired.com doesn’t post the newest issues as they are sent to home-delivery subscribers, so I can’t put up the link.  But I will quote and then bring it in to class on Tuesday so we can all have a look at it.

But if the line to the General Staff went dead, then Perimeter [the machine] would infer that apocalypse had arrived. It would immediately transfer launch authority to whoever was manning the system at that moment deep inside a protected bunker-bypassing layers and payers of normal command authority.  At that point, the ability to destroy the world would fall to whoever was n duty: maybe a high minister sent in during the crisis, maybe a 25-year-old junior officer fresh out of military academy.  And if that person decided to press the button…If/then. If/then. If/then. If/then.

Once initiated, the counterattack would be controlled by so-called command missiles  . . .  At that point, the machines will have taken over the war.  Soaring over the smoldering radioactive ruins of the motherlabd, and with al ground communications destroyed, the command missiles would lead to the destruction of the US.

The version of apocalypse in this feature is not so different from what we saw in “On the Beach.”

On a related note, I found this trailer on the Wired Web site.