The Modern Apocalypse Myth

It is impossible for a society to exist without some kind of Myth. A myth is like a society's collective dream. Just like our personal, nightly dreams, the content is deeply symbolic and archetypal , allowing the truth hidden in the myth to cut through into a deeper part of ourselves.

But the myths of today's societies are different. This is normal, because myths evolve over time to fit the societies they are paired with.

Our present myths are quite a bit different than the ones that have become before. Ours are secularized - separated from the Spiritual elements of life, in much the same way that around the bronze age our mythology was separated from the Natural elements of life. Our mythology is also somewhat incoherent, because whereas before we had organized Temples now we have the Cinema and the Internet.

Probably the most prevalent myth I see being played out in these times is the mythology of the Apocalypse. Apocalypse myths are always steeped in the fears and issues of a society in which they are told. For example, in the medieval ages the feared doom-bringers were the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, representing the main causes of death and devastation in that time such as War and Famine.

From left to right: Pale Horseman (Death), Black Horseman (Famine), Red Horseman (War), White Horseman (Conquest)

This story feeds upon the internal as well as external fears of the Medieval Mind. After all, all of this external devastation has its cause in the internal problem of sin. But it is always darkest just before the dawn - the turmoil all ends and then there is a New Heaven and a New Earth, and all sin is gone. Yipee! 

But nowadays when people think of the End Times they don't think of four horsemen, they think of a natural disasters of epic proportions (think Roland Emmerich's 2012). Natural Disasters play on our guilt of the destruction of the natural world: Mother Nature fights back with massive floods, earthquakes, etc causing our supposedly secure man-made habitats to crash in the face of a blind, impersonal force. Something that I also find interesting is that a lot of the very radical ideologies that float around nowadays (such as the Zeitgeist Movement, Venus Project, Valhalla Movement, and Radical Traditionalism) acknowledge that it is impossible to establish there model utopias under today's circumstances and anticipate an apocalypse to make that job easier (building a new civilization from the ashes). 

We keep retelling the same old stories that see the destruction of large urban centers, places like the empire state building, etc. Probably a lot of people who see movies like Roland

Emmerich's 2012 see these places on a daily basis. Why do we enjoy seeing so much devastation to modern and beloved landmarks? I believe it is because we subconsciously want to tear it down. The urban, materialistic, consumerist society is anathema to both our animal nature which longs to be close to Nature and our spiritual nature which longs to be close to God. We want to destroy it ourselves, but we feel utterly hopeless in the immensity and complexity of this massive industrial system, so we hope for an event destructive enough to do the job for us.

It is easy to compare our modern apocalyptic myths to the medieval one above: They both happen unexpectedly (perhaps with a few vague, prophetic warning signs beforehand) to wreck our civilizations, they both pray on our inner guilts (Sin in the medieval version, destruction of the natural world in the modern), and they both leave the world in a cleaner, better slate.

In the Medieval narrative, the Earth is cleansed of Sin, Mankind is redeemed in the eyes of God, and the Earth is reclaimed by God. In the Modern narrative, the Earth is cleansed of Civilization, Mankind is redeemed of his crimes against Nature, and Nature reclaims her Earth. The parallels are fascinating to me.

The symbols have changed, but the overall pattern of disaster leading to redemption has not. What is it about apocalyptic narratives that make us want to return to them so much? 

I believe it is the fact that the destruction of the world is a sort of macrocosm for our own deaths. Just as we live in the shadow of Death, but still live as though it were going to happen in a comfortably far-off future, so to do we live in the shadow of the apocalypse, but it too is in a comfortably far-away place. 

Perhaps also the Apocalyptic narrative is also a twisted cry for help - we want ourselves to change (become less materialistic, or sinful, etc) but want society to change first so the conditions to act in the right way will be right. However, changing something as massive as society is hard so we hope God/Nature will do it for us. 

If that is true, we cannot spend all of our days waiting for Doomsday. It is clear that the Apocalypse tales tell us that something needs to change, after much destruction. But, as, Gandhi Said: 

"Be the Change you want to see in the World" 

The modern and medieval notions of Armageddon are things we need to dispell from our minds. It makes people apathetic, thinking they can wait to change when the time is right. We cannot wait for society to change - be it caused by nature or god or whathaveyou - for us to change. Change starts now, and we can all undergo our own apocalypse, initiated right in the here and now, and emerge, renewed in Spiritual and Natural harmony by purifying ourselves of what we find wrong in ourselves.  This is, I think, the real meaning of an Apocalypse - a dramatic, inner transformation.

Perhaps that is what the Collective Unconscious is trying to get us to do by bombarding us with so many stories of world-ending destruction. Stir us into action by making us more and more aware of the need for some serious, destructive change.

"Resurrection" painting by Johfra.