NaDruWriNi 2018: Set the Stage
Nov. 3rd, 2018 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanPart of my research is end-of-the-world mythologies, so I've been pretty much slapping every religion I can think of into a search engine and looking for what they would consider to be the last chapter. A surprisingly large number of them are cyclical; we fuck up so badly everything catches fire and we start over from scratch, only hopefully with fewer assholes.
Then there's the Christians. Man, reading about Christian eschatology can take you down the rabbit hole of crazy faster than just about anything. Did you know there is a guy in the states breeding red cows to try and bring about the apocalypse? (Why the people who are most eager for the second coming to happen are the ones who are closest to the type of folks actual canon Jesus would launch himself at with a bullwhip, I don't know, but there it is.)
Unlike the Christians, finding out anything about indigenous beliefs about end of the world is close to impossible. There are a few academic journals hidden behind a paywall, and some quotes from a Hopi legend of dubious authenticity but that's about it.
Reading about the cyclical religions got me thinking about how often I have run into the theme of people leaving a dying earth in SF. Interstellar and the most recent incarnation of Lost in Space are the first ones I can think of in movie/tv form, but I'm sure I could come up with more examples if I thought about it while sober. It's really just an atheist version of the cosmic wheel.
Which talking about reminds me of some blog post I read once by some science journalist guy who swears he was brought into a private meeting of rich-heads who all quizzed him on the best way to survive the coming economic collapse and did he think a Mars colony was a viable option or should they just build bunkers instead. Where I guess they will eat all their cash money and stock options, I dunno.
And that just killed the vodka and tonic D made me after I finished the rum. On to the next chapter.
Then there's the Christians. Man, reading about Christian eschatology can take you down the rabbit hole of crazy faster than just about anything. Did you know there is a guy in the states breeding red cows to try and bring about the apocalypse? (Why the people who are most eager for the second coming to happen are the ones who are closest to the type of folks actual canon Jesus would launch himself at with a bullwhip, I don't know, but there it is.)
Unlike the Christians, finding out anything about indigenous beliefs about end of the world is close to impossible. There are a few academic journals hidden behind a paywall, and some quotes from a Hopi legend of dubious authenticity but that's about it.
Reading about the cyclical religions got me thinking about how often I have run into the theme of people leaving a dying earth in SF. Interstellar and the most recent incarnation of Lost in Space are the first ones I can think of in movie/tv form, but I'm sure I could come up with more examples if I thought about it while sober. It's really just an atheist version of the cosmic wheel.
Which talking about reminds me of some blog post I read once by some science journalist guy who swears he was brought into a private meeting of rich-heads who all quizzed him on the best way to survive the coming economic collapse and did he think a Mars colony was a viable option or should they just build bunkers instead. Where I guess they will eat all their cash money and stock options, I dunno.
And that just killed the vodka and tonic D made me after I finished the rum. On to the next chapter.