Eschatology! Gesundheit.
5th September 2024
My car was getting worked on, and another person in the waiting area was listening to a podcast about the End Times and how they were Nigh. They also needed to have their hearing checked, because if I can hear your ear-buds from ten feet away, you need to turn the sound down. Anyway, I mostly tuned the discussion out because 1) I’ve heard most of it before and 2) it wasn’t loud-loud.
Many cultures and belief systems have an idea of an earlier time, when things were much better than they are today. A Golden Age, the time of the Legendary Emperors, the world before the Fall, before the coming of private property when all were Noble Savages, the Dream Time when the gods walked among men and animals spoke, when the living was easy, or easier. When all people were equal (“When Adam delved and Eva span, then there was no noble man”), and a just ruler oversaw a time of peace (Numa Pompillius, Quetzalcoatl, what have you).
Some, not all, also have an end time idea. This may vary, and sometimes shows up in faiths that don’t usually focus on eschatology, like Buddhists or American Indians, or the modern Environmental movement’s more radical offshoots. Judaism has had end times movements, and Christianity is well known for people who think that the End is Nigh and can be predicted. Some people even want to bring about that end time, thus calls of “Don’t immenatize my eschaton.” The government of Iran is the best known at the moment, although I’ve heard that there are Jewish and Christian groups who seek to bring about the Second Coming or just the arrival of the Messiah by— Several things. Extinction Rebellion and some even more radical environmentalists want to trigger the return of wilderness* to the world and restore Nature to its pre-lapsarian state. Which lapse varies from group to group, and which state is often left vague, although “pristine Nature without the corruption of mankind/the free market/the patriarchy/Western Civilization/pick three” seems to be common.
Alma Boykin has many very readable fiction books on Amazon. Highly recommended.