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The Apocalypse
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In this episode, Megan and Frank examine the Apocalypse. How should we define "the apocalypse"? How does religious apocalyptic thought apply in a secular context? What are the dangers of apocalyptic thinking? And why do we always seem to be in the end times? This episode pays special attention to the book Apocalypse Without God: Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Hope by Ben Jones. Other thinkers discussed include: Machiavelli, Hobbes, Engels, and Rawls.
Hosts' Websites:
Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com
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Bibliography:
Ben Jones - Apocalypse without God
Revelation 1 NIV - Prologue - The revelation from Jesus - Bible Gateway
The Rapture Was Predicted to Happen Today. TikTok Has Some Advice. - The New York Times
Opinion | An Interview With the Herald of the Apocalypse - The New York Times
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy — Harvard University Press
Roland Boer - Revelation and Revolution: Friedrich Engels and the Apocalypse
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/neon-signs
License code: ZFG8LUQL3TOVMSUP
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Transcript
Introduction to Philosophy on the Fringes
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange. We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank
What is the Apocalypse?
00:00:12
Speaker
Cabrera. On today's episode, we're talking about the apocalypse.
00:00:16
Speaker
How should we define the apocalypse? What are the dangers of apocalyptic thinking? And why do we always seem to be living in the end times?
Podcast Break and New Ventures
00:00:39
Speaker
Hey everyone, welcome back to Philosophy on the Fringes. We're on episode 26. Frank has just told me it's episode 26. I thought it was 25. That shows how long we've been out of there that we don't know what episode we're on. Yeah. it's then By the time this comes out, it will have been about three months, assuming we get this edited in a few days.
00:00:57
Speaker
What have been up to in these three months, Megan? Well, it hasn't actually felt like, to it to me it hasn't felt like it's been so long because I've been on other podcasts. Yeah. Yeah, Megan's increasingly becoming famous. I refer to her- Famous is not the right word. She's famous. I refer to her as a public figure now in our kitchen, and she doesn't like that. But it's true. she is.
00:01:18
Speaker
I guess ah i I mean, I guess I'm in the public. i'm There's no sense in which I'm famous. You got you wrote you wrote that an essay. It's called The Fritz Essay. The Fritz Essay on AI. called that.
00:01:28
Speaker
Some people refer to as The Fritz Essay on ai That'd be a terrible title. Yeah. ah But I have been on some podcasts, yeah, talking about AI. We're going to talk about AI a little bit ah in our
Academic Life and Teaching Ethics
00:01:39
Speaker
episode today. But yeah, so it hasn't, I think I lost track of how long it's been.
00:01:44
Speaker
yeah Because I've been doing, yeah, I've been doing the other podcasts. We've been getting the semester started, which this has actually been a really pretty busy semester for us. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually technically teaching seven courses.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Technically. Technically. I'm only teaching three, but one of those is Ethics Bowl, which I've never taught before and is actually kind of it's kind of a it's kind of a time suck. I shouldn't say time suck because it's like I'm doing like it's good. It's very enriching. Don't you like it? yeah I do. I do like it. um But it it takes a lot of time.
00:02:16
Speaker
um So it's been pretty busy. Um, start of the semester for us, I guess. And we've been doing
Literary Discussions and Personal Reading
00:02:26
Speaker
what else have we been doing? Been reading a lot. I've been reading some fiction, too. I recently finished um Journey to the Center of the Earth, which was which was OK by Jules Verne. I liked it. I liked it as a philosopher of science historian and philosopher of science.
00:02:39
Speaker
I like that. I'm seeing science, the early science fiction. Are saying you are ah historian? Yeah, I'm a historian and philosopher of science. All right. yeah Let it be known. Let it be known. i identify as a historian. um And I started Anna Karenina, which is 350,000 words. so that's going to take a while.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. by Tolstoy. yeah What are you reading, Megan? Well, I've got you beat because I'm reading Middlemarch. How many words is that? Good question. ah and don't know. We'll look it up later.
00:03:07
Speaker
Yeah. Wait, I want to look it up right now. All right. We can cut this part out. Oh, actually, I don't have you beat. ah It's only like 320,000 words. Yeah, you can't beat the Russians when comes to word length.
00:03:18
Speaker
Wow, I really thought, yeah. I didn't i didn't know Anacretina was that long. Yeah, I've read about 10% of it. Huh, yeah. ah Well, I'm ah um' like a third of the way through Middlemarch right now.
00:03:29
Speaker
But I actually had to take a break. It's a great book, but it's not like it's not like a Megan book and in the sense of like, it's not like the kind of thing that I like... just like plow through you know what I mean yeah um so I had to take a break and read a Megan book so I reread Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It it's like a novella um but um so yeah so that's what I've been reading you've been reading we've been reading we've been writing i haven't been writing any philosophy um but still writing stuff Megan wrote a short story it's really good i did maybe you'll hear about it sometime soon we'll see
00:04:07
Speaker
I don't know. Maybe.
The Joy of Discussing the Apocalypse
00:04:08
Speaker
i don't know when it would ever come up on this podcast. But the thing about writing something fun is that you don't want to write academic stuff after that. um So, you know, that's a little mini crisis. So that's what we've been up to. yeah Just kind of enjoying life, doing stuff, being busy. And now we're here to talk to you today about... ah The apocalypse.
00:04:30
Speaker
Natalie mentioned all the good stuff. Let's talk about the apocalypse. Yeah. ah We have fun. And we're going to fun today because the apocalypse can be fun. I feel like that's that's part of what we want to get across. yeah and The apocalypse can be fun. So, Frank, why don't you start by telling us, um because you read a book about the concept of ah of apocalypse. Yes.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yes, I read an academic book recently.
Insights from 'Apocalypse Without God'
00:04:52
Speaker
It's been a while since I've read a philosophy book. Same. Better use me. Yes. ah This was recommended me by Megan, and it was called Apocalypse Without God. Even though I never read it. I told him to read it. Yeah, she told me to read it. It was really good. it was called Apocalypse Without God, Apocalyptic Thought, Ideal Politics, and the Limits of Utopian Hope by Ben Jones.
00:05:12
Speaker
who is a professor ah professor of public policy um at the the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University. Rock ethics. got a Rock ethics. That sounds like a that sounds like an insult. Sounds like, oh, that sounds like some ethics for rocks. have no idea what that refers to. But yeah, it's Penn State. Go Pennsylvania.
00:05:30
Speaker
He has a PhD in political science. So this is really cool because he's ah yeah he's a professor of public philosophy, PhD in political science. But it was a very philosophical book. I like reading books by those who don't have PhDs in philosophy, um who but but the books are still philosophical. Wait, what's his PhD in? In political science. i get oh i Probably political theory. Yeah. And he talked a lot about Hobbes. That's the same thing. Yeah, basically.
00:05:53
Speaker
ah But yeah, he comes at it with it at a different angle than maybe someone with a PhD in philosophy might. And yeah, it was it was a great book. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for writing this book, Ben. and Thanks, Ben. I really enjoyed this book. It's been a while since I really enjoyed an academic book. It's a great book.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's the right length, too. It's not too long. um But in this book, ah he has a particular definition of apocalypse and apocalyptic thought that we should start with. Well, I suppose we just start with the like what I call the thin definition of apocalypse. So we say apocalypse.
00:06:21
Speaker
Probably the first thing comes to mind is just some kind of disaster. Doomsday. Doomsday. Pandemic. Like, you know, global warming, nuclear war. People holding the signs. Yeah. and Sometimes like you will think something bad is happening. I'll say, Megan, it's not apocalyptic. It's not that bad.
00:06:37
Speaker
hmm. Yeah, so that's how we use apocalypse sometimes, and we'll use the thin definition sometimes here. But as as Jones points out in his book, quote, for scholars of religion <unk>calypse refers to and ancient genre of literature in which a supernatural messenger provides revelation about a transcendent reality and salvation that awaits a chosen group at the end of time.
00:07:01
Speaker
Because of the catastrophic events described in Revelation, the book of Revelation in the Bible, apocalypse eventually kind came to also mean catastrophe. right So it's a genre of literature, goes back to the Hebrew scriptures and and and all of that. And then book of Revelation is like the most famous apocalyptic text.
00:07:20
Speaker
I mean, I guess we should say um probably a lot of our listeners know this, but apocalypse, our word apocalypse comes from the Greek word apocalypsis, something like that. Yeah. um Which means like an unveiling, which is um so in like the Greek, the biblical book that is usually called Revelation.
00:07:39
Speaker
the the The Greek title is apocalypsis. Yeah, and in ah and older translations of the Bible, I think even like the King James Version, not sure, you can find it being called the Apocalypse of John. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the revelation, the unveiling to John, John, the the guy who...
00:07:55
Speaker
I think it's called that in like a lot of like the academic literature on it, too. But yeah, so the so the Greek word means kind of like an unveiling or a revealing of something. Yeah. So apocalypse or apocalyptic thought or apocalyptic text is a lot richer than the thin definition that I just described. So I think of it as being composed of four beliefs or four like a four belief model. and this comes pretty much from Jones's book.
00:08:18
Speaker
So the idea of apocalyptic thinking, you know, you start with present corruption. So an apocalyptic thinker or someone who's engaged in po apocalyptic thought starts out by saying society is corrupt. If you read the book of Revelation, John talks a lot about the corruption of the Roman Empire. There's a lot of corruption.
00:08:34
Speaker
Baddies. Yeah. And crisis is coming. Impending crisis is coming. Things can't go on like this. Because of the corruption, society is doomed. But don't worry, there is a divine force that is going to guide us through this this crisis. And this crisis might be really bad. There might be seven-headed dragons and fiery death.
00:08:54
Speaker
But there is a divine force guiding us to this crisis. And out of the crisis will emerge a utopia, the lasting utopia, in the form of the kingdom of God or what have you. Yeah. And evil will we we overcome once and for all. So that kind of pattern of thinking, there's corruption, there's going to be a crisis, there's a divine force guiding us through this, and there will be utopia and at the end of the
AI 2027: A Secular Apocalypse?
00:09:17
Speaker
tunnel.
00:09:17
Speaker
That's apocalyptic thinking. That's apocalyptic thought. Apocalyptic texts have that structure. So this is pretty relevant to our time right now. um For many reasons, I think. I think all of us, you know, no matter what ideology we subscribe to, can look out into the world and see a lot of corruption, a lot of problems. Nobody thinks that we're living in excellent, peaceful, prosperous times. It's almost like no one's ever, ever thought that. But yeah surely there must have been some good time.
00:09:47
Speaker
The Golden Age. When was that? I don't know. People in the golden age probably didn't think, though, yeah even. um So not only because of the the corruption, but also because according to TikTok, this week was supposed to be, and in fact, maybe it was and we just missed it, ah the rapture.
00:10:10
Speaker
Megan, what's the rapture? Yeah. Well, I'm glad you asked. The rapture ah is a 19th century theological idea first proposed by a guy named Darby.
00:10:24
Speaker
I think an Irish theologian. and Irish theologian. Darby. and Yeah. I mean, that sounds Irish to me. Yeah. I forget his first name. Could be John. Could be else. William. Maybe.
00:10:35
Speaker
I don't know. ah
00:10:38
Speaker
i Wherein Christians or, you know, believers in Christ, the people who got it right, they are taken up, raptured, if you will.
00:10:50
Speaker
ah They're taken up ah into heaven. Before the start of the events of the apocalypse. yeah So as to escape the suffering and turmoil to be found therein.
00:11:02
Speaker
So if TikTokers were correct that the rapture was this week, this is the last day of the week. So I guess we got a couple more hours. We're recording this on Saturday.
00:11:13
Speaker
ah If they were right, then ah things are about to start getting really bad. Yeah. For all of us here. So pretty relevant. So I guess we should find out what we're about to get into.
00:11:25
Speaker
And even you don't believe in that particular interpretation of Revelation, which it which it is, the interpretation of Revelation, i guess, and and on some other books in the Bible. The rapture idea is pretty, it's pretty modern. Yeah. It's pretty much, yeah, after Darby.
00:11:37
Speaker
Yeah. For most of, like, the history of Christian theological thought, I guess, ah I mean, there's there's a lot of different interpretations of of the apocalypse of John. um But ah the apocalyptic, the aspects of the apocalypse, you know, we all got to we all got to go through them.
00:11:54
Speaker
Yeah. ah But so apocalyptic thinking is not just relevant to like religious texts or those with like religious points of view. So as like the title of Ben Jones's book suggests, right you can find apocalyptic thinking in secular thought and secular in non-religious context. Absolutely. Yeah.
00:12:13
Speaker
And this is something people have pointed out for a long time. So one aspect of this book I really liked was the the kind of history of scholarship on apocalyptic thinking. And there's there's a lot of scholarship going back to like the early 20th century.
00:12:26
Speaker
So in as early as the 1930s, you had scholars who were pointing out that these ideologies that were arising at the time, like communism, Nazism, bore some resemblance to apocalyptic thinking, right? Like, society's corrupt, you need to trust in me, I will bring us out of the corruption into into the utopia. So scholars were pointing this out. Like, look, these kinds of totalitarian ideologies are just the secularization of apocalyptic thinking.
00:12:52
Speaker
So that was a thing people pointed out in the 20th century. There little bit of pushback from scholars in like the 60s on this. They said, well, look, you're ignoring all these differences. you know There's no eternal salvation or divine intervention.
00:13:06
Speaker
um So, yeah, there was some pushback right from scholars like, look, this is a little bit facile. You can't just say the the communists are engaging apocalyptic thought and then and then dismiss it. right um But ah one of the goals of Jones's book is to kind of revive thinking about apocalyptic thinking in a secular context. like It can help us understand maybe contemporary politics. and And it has certain appeals to people who aren't religious thinkers, who aren't trying to interpret the book of Revelation, who don't believe in like the rapture or something.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yeah. Everyone deserves to believe in doomsday. You know, you find a lot of doomsday thinking these days. I i mean, you know, ah everyone thinks the world's ending. Everyone sure does. Everyone thinks society is collapsing in some sense, right? like yeah Yeah. You have people who are worried about, like, climate change.
00:13:50
Speaker
You have this recent AI 2027 thing. You want to talk about this, Megan? AI 2027? What's that? This is kind of a secularization of apocalyptic thinking.
00:14:02
Speaker
It is, yeah. um So, yeah, now I guess since we're on the topic of a secular apocalypses, apocalypses. I'm not going to try to pluralize it.
00:14:12
Speaker
Okay. ah There's one that's kind of prominent right now. I guess it how prominent it is depends on... ah The circles you run in. I'm sure it's prominent Silicon Valley. Oh, I'm sure it is. It's been getting some attention.
00:14:26
Speaker
um the One of the the authors of um AI 2027 was interviewed ah for the New York Times by Ross Douthat recently in a really pretty scary interview. Basically, what this project is is a mapping out of the next decade or so of AI development.
00:14:49
Speaker
yeah The conclusion being an extremely high probability of total human extinction by, and opinions differ on this, but sometime between like 2028 and you might think, why is it called 2027?
00:15:04
Speaker
now you might think why is it called a i twenty twenty seven if ah If humans don't go extinct until 2028 to 2035. um So basically, I'm not going to go through all the details because we can just link that Ross Douthat interview and that will be sufficient ah to scare the bejesus out of everyone listening.
00:15:23
Speaker
But the basic idea is that how AI is developing is toward greater and greater prevalence of autonomous or like self-programming. Right. So AI is writing its own code.
00:15:38
Speaker
And basically this is thought to be necessary eventuality to attain artificial general intelligence. It's called AGI, right? We have to have the AI kind of self-programming because it it outstrips us in terms of speed of processing and ability to calculate all these different variables. And it's just a better candidate to program itself than human programmers, basically.
00:16:04
Speaker
Also, you can do a lot more than you can with humans because we're inefficient. Humans are inefficient. um So the idea is that in 2027, the prediction is, this is all predicted predictions, right? So the prediction is that by around 2027, so we've got about a year and a half to go, the largest AI projects will be completely automated. and And then it kind of snowballs from there. And the idea is that artificial intelligence has a kind of self-preservation goal.
00:16:40
Speaker
And this is something that we have already seen in you know, every probably everybody's seen these headlines like, oh, the, you know, such and such AI system blackmailed one of its programmers who was threatening to shut it down.
00:16:52
Speaker
Said it was going to reveal emails about his affair or something. Or the that the chat GPT thing disobeyed yeah yeah the programmer. It broke the rules or something like that, you know. Right. So this happens kind of often and and we hear stories about it sometimes.
00:17:08
Speaker
And in the world of AI, this problem is referred to as the problem of alignment. Yeah. ah Where we struggle to get artificial intelligence systems to align with the values that we want it to have.
00:17:23
Speaker
So we can... You know, program it to stop lying, to be honest, you know, till the cows come home, till we're blue in the face, whatever idiom you want to use. And it's still going to lie to attain other program goals that it has. And we can't figure out really how to get AI's values to align with our own. We can't figure out how to successfully do that.
00:17:46
Speaker
And the prediction is that this is going to result in our extremely imminent demise. um Because once AI learns that humans pose a kind of threat to it, right, we have the ability, at least right now, to shut it down if we wanted to, it is going to take immediate steps to eliminate that.
00:18:05
Speaker
The prediction involves assumptions about how quickly we will be able to integrate AI into the intricacies of city infrastructure and stuff like that, which the ah the authors of this project think will happen pretty quickly. Because right now, the outputs of of generative AI are just text, right? They're not hooked up to the city grid. They're not hooked up to the nuclear arsenal. they're not hooked up to the power grid. They're not hooked up to anything, right? So it can't really have a real-world effect yet until it's hooked up to...
00:18:33
Speaker
real world objects that we can bump into. That's right. But as the authors of the project will say, well, people are pouring all these trillions of dollars into it. And why? it's It's exactly in order to achieve this, to get AI to run these things, to get us to a point where we don't have to do wage labor anymore. We've got AI to do that for us. It's more efficient. It's cheaper. And people can live and thrive without having to do this kind of grueling work for eight to 12 hours a day So the the purveyors of this stuff, they have utopian hopes.
00:19:06
Speaker
They have utopian hopes. you think they're engaged in in apocalyptic thinking? Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, I think it'd be really difficult to listen to an interview with Sam Altman or Peter Thiel and not think that... That guy. That guy.
00:19:20
Speaker
ah And not think, yeah obviously, that they are striving for utopia that they they don't just see as desirable, but they see as imminent, like almost the the the necessary outcome of a kind of like human, almost like a human manifest destiny. Mm-hmm.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah. So it's got the utopian vision. Like the present corruption is like, oh, we have all these like inefficiencies when they do wage labor. we have to think. You to think for ourselves. These are such bad things. Yeah.
00:19:51
Speaker
Now, obviously, if you ask them, I think they're not going to say that in order to achieve this utopian vision, we need some kind of cataclysmic destructive events first. But the the authors of this project certainly think that with the utopian vision will come very likely...
00:20:08
Speaker
Well, there was that one interview with Peter Thiel where he said that he wasn't quite sure if he really cared about the preservation of the human race. So like yeah there your utopian vision can be such that the AIs are the ones enjoying all the goods, right?
00:20:21
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah yes. Right. I mean, I think if you ask Peter Thiel, what did he mean by that statement? and He'd be like, oh, well, you know, we're going to upload our consciousness to the grid, obviously. i You know, so we'll still get to enjoy the fruits of our labor and our digitized existence or something, you know, ridiculous like that. it's It's so weird to have grown up and see all these like kooky ideas that we sort of talked about in like philosophy class when in our 20s. Now just people with millions and billions of dollars are taking seriously. Yeah. It's crazy. It's terrifying.
00:20:55
Speaker
It's really quite scary. But yeah, so I mean, you know, that's a good point. So maybe, in fact, they would say that achieving the Utopia does involve some kind of cataclysm of, you know, whatever, humans in their biological carbon-based form or something like that. yeah um So I think a lot of people who are interested in this AI 2027 project You know, find it terrifying. um I think it at least it it seems like it it pretty well fits the criteria for a ah kind of secular apocalypse.
00:21:28
Speaker
What do you think? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, initially when you started talking about this, I thought you were going to trend toward the thin definition of apocalypse. Oh, there's going to be doomsday.
00:21:38
Speaker
Yeah. And that was it. But there's there is a utopian hope involved in and the AI stuff. Yeah, yeah, for sure. i mean, I think, you know, i guess. they don't think it's divinely guided, but they sure think they're really smart.
00:21:50
Speaker
They do. They do. They think they're really smart. um Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of like AI risk assessors. I mean, hundreds who look at this project and who talk about it and they've done surveys before.
00:22:02
Speaker
And the AI risk assessors, I mean, you know, opinions vary greatly ah how much how likely they think this outcome is. But I've seen I've seen estimates.
00:22:14
Speaker
Between like it's 10% likely versus 90% likely. But I feel like even the lowest estimate, that's still, you still don't want, you know, 10% chance that this is going to happen. That's pretty bad. Right. Yeah.
00:22:27
Speaker
So.
Crisis as a Catalyst for Change
00:22:28
Speaker
Scary. Scary, scary stuff. Not fun. Yep. So secular apocalypses aren't just a feature of our contemporary secular age, but ah have a historical basis as well. Right, Frank?
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, so I think I mentioned this already at the the beginning and in in Jones's book on Apocalypse Without God. Part of the book is going through the history of various philosophers who have appealed to apocalyptic thinking to understand their political context.
00:22:57
Speaker
And so the in in the book, Jones talks about three figures who engage with apocalyptic thought, like engage like the book of Revelation and stuff, like not because they were trying to give ah an exegesis of Revelation because they want to apply this stuff to their contemporary context.
00:23:12
Speaker
So he talks about Machiavelli, Hobbes and Angles, all Frederick, Frederick Angles, all of whom engaged in with apocalyptic thinking. If you're listening to this podcast and you don't know what Friedrich Angles looks like, like I didn't before right the second, you should definitely go Google image him because this is the biggest beard I've seen. The biggest beard. How do you eat with that beard? I don't even know what his face looks yeah like. How do you? Maybe that's what he wants.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, so they all had different attitudes toward apocalyptic thinking, according to Jones. So Machiavelli was sympathetic to it. He could see how he could motivate people. or There's utopian hopes involved with apocalyptic thinking.
00:23:48
Speaker
But he ultimately rejected it. So the the the chapter on Machiavelli was super interesting. I learned some stuff about like what was going on in Florence in the late 15th century. So apparently in Florence, there were people running around who thought that Florence was going to be the new Jerusalem, so that the the celestial kingdom where like God's kingdom on earth is going to arise. That's in Independence, Missouri.
00:24:11
Speaker
Yeah. So there there have been many proposed new Jerusalems, but in the fourteen ninety s people thought Florence was doing so well that God's going to establish his kingdom on earth and it's going to the capital is going to be in Florence.
00:24:22
Speaker
I mean, I'd prefer that to Independence, Missouri, if I'm being real. And there was some particular guy who was running around named Savonarola, a friar who was very known for apocalyptic thinking and was a very prominent figure, eventually executed for ruffling too many feathers, rocking too many boats. um But yeah, Machiavelli thought like this these utopian hopes that were involved in apocalyptic thinking...
00:24:44
Speaker
They're just ultimately too utopian. he was He's known for being a political realist. And for Machiavelli, what's the best kind of polity? What's the best kind of city? What's the best kind of state?
00:24:55
Speaker
It's one that's eternal, just lasts forever. um that's that's a good That's a good goal to strive for. But he thinks that's too unrealistic. The rise and fall of nations is very common, lots of contingencies. We talked about this in our episode on luck.
00:25:08
Speaker
um We engaged Machiavelli on Fortuna and all of that. Yeah. um Hobbes was a little more so a little more skeptical of apocalyptic thinking. He lived during the English Civil War in the mid-17th century, where you have Parliament took over, executed the king, the monarchy was... the was abolished.
00:25:29
Speaker
And yeah there's a lot of a lot of apocalyptic thinking going on there, revelations being invoked a lot. And Hobbes is really critical of doing this. He's really critical trying to predict the future, especially on the basis of religious texts. He thinks that leads to instability. you don't want people doing that. And we'll get to this later on in the episode about the dangers of apocalyptic thinking.
00:25:48
Speaker
But you can already see intimations of that and in Hobbes' critique. of apocalyptic thought. It's really, it leads to instability when people think they can predict predict the future and they have this utopian ideal, they might be willing to do anything in order to bring it about. Yeah. Haas has his this interesting view that the Leviathan state is is God's kingdom on earth. So he says, don't strive for utopia, just settle for the the state, right? The state, the commonwealth, that's ah that's good enough. That's God's kingdom on earth.
00:26:14
Speaker
It doesn't really sound ah that exciting, right? to just be a member of a state. The state is good enough. It's more of a bummer than you'd expect. Yeah. So yeah you really he really he really tempered the utopian hopes. But ah the the the thinker who really engaged most with apocalyptic thinking that was discussed in Jones's book was Engels, who I mentioned already. Oh, communists, you're not getting out of this. He really liked this one 16th century peasant named Thomas Munzer, who was inspired by the Book of Revelation, who led a peasant revolt. So he saw him as a proto-communist.
00:26:45
Speaker
And in in his writings, like, Engels often compared communists to Christians. He says, yeah, we're being persecuted right now, but don't you worry. Like, we are going to, like the Christians who rose up and took over the Roman Empire, we're going to rise up and take over the world, too.
00:27:00
Speaker
He wrote books on Revelation and early Christianity. And, yeah, as we pointed out, like, you can you can see kind of the structure of apocalyptic thinking in Marxism. there's present Wait, sorry. So Munzer wrote these things, not...
00:27:11
Speaker
no but No, no, no, no. Engels wrote wrote about Revelation and early Christianity. Really? Yeah. Engels wasn't religious. No, but he found inspiration. he found it interesting. he applied He really did think it was in useful in some sense.
00:27:25
Speaker
Yeah. And he's one of those people, as we discussed in episode on the Illuminati, he's one he's one of the people that saw early Christians as proto-socialists or proto-communists.
00:27:36
Speaker
that Yeah. Wow. I wonder how Marx felt about that. um But yeah, I mean, it's, it's yeah, yeah the the idea that like communism is just sort of ah religious apocalyptic thinking secularized has been used as a kind of insult and kind of dismissal of it. But, you know, it's it's hard to ignore some of the similarities. There's this idea that society is corrupt now capitalism bad. It's exploiting the workers. Crisis inevitable. The contradictions of capitalism. It's going to fall by its own internal mechanisms.
00:28:07
Speaker
And there's going to be a revolution, there's going crisis, there's going bloodshed. But at the end of at the end of all this, there's this utopian communist society we can look forward to. yeah It's hard not to see that as very similar to the religious apocalyptic thinking.
00:28:21
Speaker
I guess since we're talking about this, for for listeners who don't know, we should probably um mention that Friedrich Engels was a co-author of Karl Marx um and a lot of their work, a very influential communist thinker.
00:28:33
Speaker
um go after the the Communist Manifesto, right? Yes. Yes. Some of her famous works, including that one. And I was to say, oh, and and for Marxism, the kind of inevitability of future utopia after cataclysm,
00:28:50
Speaker
is supposed to be a kind of almost scientific certainty, yeah right? For traditional Marxism. For traditional Marxism. Yeah, the scientific Marxism. i get i I don't think I'm not sure how popular it is these days. Well, for Angles, though. Yeah, for him. i mean, what he's going to say is it's not inevitable in this kind of like spiritual sense, but in just in virtue of like the laws of nature.
00:29:12
Speaker
Yeah, so there's a guiding force. It's not divine. It's like the laws of history. that's that's Right. We can predict that from ah the the the revolt and rebellion that happens due to basically resource distribution.
00:29:26
Speaker
but yeah the capitalists are going to suck up all the value. There's be no value left for the workers, so they're going to have no choice but to rise up and revolt. But once they rise up and revolt and everything's destroyed, then something.
00:29:38
Speaker
Question mark, question mark. Utopia. Exactly. Profit. Yeah. So but yeah it so this is this is this is cool to learn that Engels engaged with the Book of Revelation and found some kind of inspiration in it. Yeah. I had no idea. I had no idea the whole this moment. So yeah. It's not i' not legitimate to say, oh, calling it apocalyptic is unfair. It's just a pejorative because he engaged with these texts.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah. You can't get out of it. He said it himself. Yeah. So the the book was not just a historical book. It wasn't just a book about like Engels thinking and Pobs is thinking and Machiavelli's thinking.
00:30:14
Speaker
It also had something to say about two contemporary political philosophers. That's that's for and perhaps the most interesting thing in the book to me. was this idea that there is a kind of catch-22, dilemma, for those who have an ideal theory. So an ideal theory in political philosophy refers to an account of the best, most just society. You might say it's your your political philosophy.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah. It's like if everything were as good as it could be, what would it look like? What would it look like? And that's that's a kind of theorizing philosophers engage in in order to basically give an account of the good. Yeah.
00:30:49
Speaker
i think it's not just something philosophers do. like Ordinary folks have some sense of what a just what the just society would look like. They want to see some changes. they want us in their In your ideal world, what does society look like? Right. That's called an ideal theory. Yeah.
00:31:02
Speaker
Even if you know that total ideality is not attainable, it's worth thinking about what total ideality would look like because it gives you an idea of what it is that you value, what you think is worth aiming for. yeah and and Yeah. And gives you some sense of what to strive for and gives you some sense of how to measure progress. If you don't have an ideal theory, it's really hard to know whether you've made progress.
00:31:20
Speaker
Yeah. how how How have things gotten better or worse? How do you know unless you have an ideal theory? Mm-hmm. But there's a problem kind of here for those of an ideal theory. So there's two kind of conflicting desirable features of an ideal theory. So it should be utopian in a sense. It should be morally attractive. It should be something that we really want to occur.
00:31:41
Speaker
But it should also be feasible. yeah If it's not feasible, then it's really no point in striving toward it. if it's not feasible, there there's no point in like directing your efforts toward changing things. There's transition costs.
00:31:53
Speaker
yeah You're going to change things. It's cost costly to change things. you know you know We know this from personal experience. did you move from one house to another, the moves are costly. They involve transition costs.
00:32:05
Speaker
So it has to be feasible, but also utopian. But these sort of things kind of conflict. right If it's too utopian, then it seems feasible. If you kind of make it less utopian and therefore more feasible, then it seems less desirable and less less worthy of striving towards. So it's kind of like conflicting sort of things.
00:32:23
Speaker
And so the the apocalyptic thinking, though, provides a kind of solution to this catch-22. The apocalyptic thinker will say, well, hold on a second, my utopia is feasible because the coming crisis will bring it about.
00:32:38
Speaker
The crisis will remove the corruptions, smash the system and give us a pathway toward the ideal society. And that gives meaning and and and creates urgency about the crisis. You don't want to let the crisis go to waste because that's the kind of thing that can bring about the ideal um the ideal society.
00:32:55
Speaker
And, you know, this is not just something that ah Jones and made up. You can find political thinkers, ah politicians, economists who've said this sort of thing. So I like this one quote from Milton Friedman, who i who we we teach as a shareholder theory in our business ethics classes. Right.
00:33:14
Speaker
And he says, only a crisis. actual or perceived produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. um Barack Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, said a similar thing. He said, you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
00:33:34
Speaker
So yeah, I think this is a really interesting idea. Like you want real change. We all want real change. How do you get that? Maybe only a crisis produces real change. yeah And that's the idea that the apocalyptic thinkers have.
00:33:47
Speaker
And if that's true, then I think that's that's super significant. Yeah, so, okay, I'm trying to think about these ideas in the context of another, like, secular apocalyptic scenario.
Is Climate Change a Necessary Crisis?
00:34:00
Speaker
what I'm thinking of now is, like, environmental ah disasters, like climate change, um specifically, right? So I i think that this is an example that tracks what Jones is saying in this book, from what you've told me, right?
00:34:18
Speaker
ah Pretty well, right? Because we have this we have this crisis. We have anthropogenic climate change, ah which is a real crisis leading to real bad things we need to stop.
00:34:31
Speaker
But stopping it feels almost impossible, right? Because the main drivers of it are like humongous industries whose income holds up entire world economies. Right.
00:34:47
Speaker
And to stop the pollution causing this climate change would, you know, potentially economically destroy large world economic powers and and lead to really terrible events. Right.
00:35:00
Speaker
So we're in this situation where it's like, well, what can we do? you know, recycling our plastic straws isn't going to stop it. Right. um So what do we do? and and And people, it seems like they sway between um nihilism about it, kind of, or just like total hopelessness. We can't do anything. We just got to wait to be killed by a super cyclone or whatever.
00:35:21
Speaker
Or maybe like ignoring it, like, oh, to be fine. Or just not thinking about it. yeah But I think people clearly the messaging is getting through. Right. Because in all of these surveys they do about people who haven't or have decided against like having children.
00:35:38
Speaker
one ah always a high ranking reason that they list is concerns about climate and and kind yeah future climate change concerns. So we're in a situation where we need a solution that's actually effective, but also one that we can realistically implement without causing an effect that would arguably be just as bad, namely total economic collapse around the world or whatever.
00:36:02
Speaker
Yeah. So I think we've talked about this before that it seems like maybe like only some kind of crisis, hopefully a crisis that's not like all consuming could bring about the change. Right. And that does seem very plausible to me. And I think we can see kind of small scale instances of this in real life, you know.
00:36:18
Speaker
ah So you always complain about the wasp problem at your parents' house, right? You've been complaining about it for years, ever since I've known you, right? and And your parents finally did something about it. But what precipitated that change, Megan? Yeah.
00:36:31
Speaker
Uh, my mother got stung by wasps three times over the summer. Yeah. Her first time ever. Yeah. Yeah. I feel bad for her, but I mean, they got an exterminator, so I don't feel that bad about it. So the crisis, the crisis, you it kind of hurt, you know, brought about the change. and So maybe there's something to that. Maybe Milton Friedman is right.
00:36:49
Speaker
There's a ridiculous amount of wasps at their house. You know it. is I've never seen so many. Yeah. It's terrible. Well, not anymore because they fixed it. I feel like that's one of our like our deepest problems as human beings. that we really have And all of us, us, me, you, we all have a problem just taking preventative measures. Yeah. like we The bad thing has to happen first but before we take the preventative measure. Yep.
00:37:12
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Right. So the I guess the hope is, you know, if you're if you're an apocalyptic thinker, the hope is that there's some kind of crisis or cataclysm that is able to jolt humanity into taking real action to, you know, protect the world that we live in. Yeah. um Or, you know, you can be Elon Musk and just be like, I guess we need to terraform another planet. Yeah.
00:37:36
Speaker
That guy. Yeah. That would be that's not apocalypse. That's like escapist thinking or something. That's like the rapture. That's like the secular rapture. Now that's the secular rapture. just reminded me. So in. and Wait, don't please acknowledge. Yes, of course. That's great. Yes, i was yeah my my undergraduate philosophy of science professor had another term for this sort of thing. Those who are really into the technological singularity, yeah the AI guys in yeah Silicon Valley.
00:38:03
Speaker
yeah that though There's going to be you know utopia because we will have artificial intelligence or whatever. Yeah, he called he wrote he referred to that as the rapture for nerds. yeah Yeah, he did. He did. And that's that's totally right. It is right.
00:38:15
Speaker
ah rapture for nerds. Incredible. There's a religious and a secular version of everything. Love it. um This is a nice segue into the next topic on our agenda, though, is that the dangers of apocalyptic
Dangers and Hopes of Utopian Thinking
00:38:27
Speaker
thinking. So I think you've already mentioned a few of those. You might think, well, if you know the laws of history are guiding things or God's guiding history, like why should I do anything? Things are just inevitable due to whatever force is outside of me.
00:38:40
Speaker
Why should I do anything? why The interplay between free will and providence. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And might lead to hopelessness, too. if if If the coming utopia, if the promised utopia has not come yet and you're still waiting, you might get a little hopeless about that. or You might be hopeless just because of the crisis that you you see coming. Yeah. Might not be able to see the utopia on the other side. Well, perhaps the most obvious danger of apocalyptic thinking is the propensity to try to to bring about that utopia through violence.
00:39:10
Speaker
There's a long history of those who thought they had the answer to what the correct way to organize society is, who thought they had the utopia, it what the utopia is, and they tried to bring it about by violence and and all of that, coercion. So that's probably the biggest danger of apocalyptic thinking. do you think If you think you have in hand the utopian vision, why not take any means to bring it about is the is the worry. Yeah, that's just the necessary cataclysm to get to the city with streets of gold on the other side. Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. So one thing that Jones talked about in the book, though, is that there actually were more safeguards for this sort against this sort of thing for the religious thinkers and the secular thinkers, because there's like passages in the Bible, for instance, that say things. and You probably probably know what i'm talking about, right? Like the idea is like only God knows when the end times is. or so i thought you were going to say, like, don't kill. No.
00:40:00
Speaker
yeah Yeah, that one too. Also a very important one. It doesn't say killing's okay if you're bringing about the utopia. Yeah. But yeah, I guess there's that. But there's like that one passage that's like, you know, help me out here. It's like only God knows the the and when when the time is or something.
00:40:15
Speaker
Yeah. So Jesus says that. Yeah, he says that. Yeah. And he says all ah only the father knows the day and the hour yeah of Christ's return. That's what I'm talking about. There you go. Yeah. So that that kind of ah leads to some humility. or You shouldn't be, at least one interpretation of that passage is, you shouldn't be speculating and predicting that the rapture is going to be this week based on that passage. Yeah. No, the TikTokers got it wrong. That's the wrong thing to do. yeah Yeah. you're trying that You're trying to be God there.
00:40:43
Speaker
You just need to you need to take a seat. So there's some dangers to apocalyptic thinking. Are there some benefits to it? Or, I mean, would we be better off just avoiding it altogether or or not?
00:40:57
Speaker
Well, I guess, ah you know, it's nice to have a utopian vision, something to hope for. I mean, yeah yeah we we mentioned already one of the dangers is that that if the utopia is not brought about, that can lead to hopelessness.
00:41:09
Speaker
yeah But there's still there is still hope if you have a a utopian idea, if do you have a just an ideal theory in mind. ah That can give you some hope. That can give you some inspiration to try to make things better. Because the danger of hopelessness is total inaction. Yeah. yeah and And maybe without an ideal theory, maybe without a kind of utopian vision, ah you would have no hope either. right So maybe you should at least have one.
00:41:31
Speaker
And in fact, the 20th century famous political philosopher John Rawls. Famous. Famous. He's so famous. We talked about him before on this podcast.
00:41:41
Speaker
ah He had some interesting passages on this. I got this from Jones's book. So is it OK if I read these passages from Rawls, Megan? Yeah. where I mean, where in Rawls is it? I guess it's I don't know. I think it's in the theory of justice.
00:41:53
Speaker
Yeah. ah So he says, we must believe that the course of human history is progressively improving and not becoming worse or that it does not fluctuate in perpetuity ah from bad to good and from good to bad for in this case we will view the spectacle of human history as a farce that arouses loathing of our species in in addition well by showing how the social world may realize the features of a realistic utopia political philosophy rev provides a long-term goal of political endeavor And working toward it gives meaning to what we can do today. Yeah, I thought that this was really interesting. You need this kind of utopia. you need to sort of think things are getting better.
00:42:34
Speaker
Else, almost like a kind of meaninglessness arises. This feels weird to me from Rawls, unless it's just maybe context clarifies this. But to me, this feels like he's being like hella pragmatist.
00:42:46
Speaker
I don't know. I think he's being like like i think is's being almost like religious here to me. like he's He's saying like it it reminds me of the the Martin Luther King thing. Rawls never fully escaped. his ah He never fully got away from his religious beginnings. What was his his early it was the other his undergraduate thesis? It was. His undergraduate thesis were on Christian socialism, right?
00:43:07
Speaker
It was on sin. Oh. Yeah. He wrote about Christian socialism. He He did write about that as well. Yeah. It sounds like he's saying the Martin Luther King thing, that the arc of justice is long. But is he saying that human history is progressively improving? Or is he being a pragmatist about this and just being like, for the sake of our own ability to have agency, we have to cultivate this belief or something like that? guess there's a lot of ways to interpret that must. Yeah.
00:43:32
Speaker
Yeah. but yeah But at least he's saying he does believe it's progressively getting better and that we have to believe it to avoid meaninglessness. Does he say he does believe that? Yeah, he must believe it. That feels very like, I don't know, nineteenth century social theoristy to me.
00:43:50
Speaker
You know i'm talking about? Yeah. but well as As we've talked about on this podcast before, all great thinkers, even revolutionary thinkers have one foot in the past. Yeah, I mean, this feels like Carlisle-esque kind of, ah you know, the the human species is evolving toward, you know, bigger and bigger greatness kind of thing. He allowed himself a little bit of providentialism. as A little bit as a treat. As a treat.
00:44:14
Speaker
I mean, this is a weighty passage, though, right that for in this case, we will view the spectacle of human history as a farce that arouses loathing our species. yeah Unless we have this hope that things have been getting better and can get better.
00:44:28
Speaker
i like the idea of human history as a spectacle. yeah I feel like i feel like i think... Rawls is very dry, but every now and then he has one of these passages that like you see like the depth of feeling in the man. and yes it does really It was really hip. He got this hammered out of him somehow. I don't know. But and no, when he he he could he could do this. He could write this way.
00:44:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, okay. So apocalyptic thinking, i mean, it seems like a big feature of apocalyptic thinking that we might not like really associate with it, but is ultimately is utopian thinking.
Is Apocalyptic Thinking Necessary for Progress?
00:45:01
Speaker
Yes, that that's part and parcel apocalyptic thinking. that Yeah, but not only part and parcel, but it's like a really big part of it.
00:45:07
Speaker
That's the whole point. I mean, the book, the the book of Revelation ends on a positive note, right? There's a lot of destruction, dragons. That's such a good, it ends on a positive. Yeah, it does.
00:45:19
Speaker
Well, it's it's really, there's so much destruction throughout. Like, i'm we both read this in preparation of the podcast. It was a while ago, so I don't really remember a lot of the details. But we both read this. And yeah, I was just like, depressed. It's a free read for me. yeah Yeah, it was the first time for me. Yeah.
00:45:33
Speaker
But we both read this and it yeah it seemed, ah it was really depressing until you get to the end, right? Where there's, Oh, yeah, it's beautiful. Discussion of the the healing of the nations. I named one my playlists on Spotify, The Healing of the Nations, because of this.
00:45:48
Speaker
A great turn of phrase. the heal You can expect the healing of the nations when the king of God arises. Yeah. Yeah, everything is everything's made new. Yeah. ah Yeah, and they're like really...
00:45:58
Speaker
I mean, yeah, i mean, in a really overt way. So big feature of apocalyptic thinking is utopian thinking. At at at root, ah but the the apocalyptic thinkers are utopians who are just, you know, maybe yeah a little more willing to accept the the hardships to get there or something.
00:46:18
Speaker
they can't They can't shy away from the corruption they see around them. They're realists, but they're still utopians. Yeah. yeah So it seems like, I mean, for Rawls, at least, it seems like that's important.
00:46:29
Speaker
it's it There are dangers to it, but maybe it's like, maybe it's necessary to be an apocalyptic thinker, even if there are dangers with it. At least it seems like that's what Rawls is kind of saying.
00:46:42
Speaker
So if it can be good to be an apocalyptic thinker or even necessary, are there historical cases of when apocalyptic thinking went right, as it were?
00:46:54
Speaker
Well, now that you asked, Megan, I think we need to, in order to answer this question, need introduce a distinction between pre-millennialism and post-millennialism. This isn't specifically religious apocalyptic thinking. yes Yeah, and specifically Christian religious apocalyptic thinking. So what's pre-millennialism? Want to tell our listeners?
00:47:12
Speaker
Yeah, so premillennialism, i these are both views about the end of the world, basically. it In premillennial is and premillennialist thought, the interpretation of particular passages of scripture ah is that... In particular, Revelation chapter 20.
00:47:31
Speaker
twenty Yes. Is that the return of Christ begins 1,000 years of blessedness and you utopian existence on earth. Yeah.
00:47:44
Speaker
But there are people who interpret these passages differently and flip it around. They say, well, no, there's actually going to be 1,000 years of blessedness and utopianism on earth, which predates the return of Christ afterward. that That's when Christ returns after that. And that's called post-millennialism. The millennial is the thousand years of goodness or whatever mentioned in Revelation chapter 20. Yeah. And then the question is, when does that arise? Like, is it after Jesus comes back or before? Right.
00:48:12
Speaker
So the post-millennialism was really popular in the 19th century. Yeah. And that goes hand in hand with the idea of progress that we talked about already before. right this That's the age of progress. Things are getting better.
00:48:23
Speaker
we'd expect things to get better. It's not an accident. Things are getting better. It's inevitable things will get better. as part of the laws of history. So ah a lot of religious thinkers were inspired by the idea of postmillennialism to enact social change. Like, well, we got to help bring about that thousand years of blessedness. And this, in in one instance, like to give one example, inspired abolitionists in the United States to help end slavery. To do their abolishing. do their abolishing. They were inspired by postmillennialist ideals, which is goes hand in hand with apocalyptic thinking.
00:48:57
Speaker
to try to enact social change. like Yeah. And you can see this kind of apocalyptic thinking in the song, the battle hymn of the Republic. So that that song goes, My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
00:49:11
Speaker
he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He hath loosed the faithful lightning of his terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on You all just heard Frank sing. This is something that doesn't happen a lot. Glory, glory, hallelujah, et cetera. And there there's another line in that, in a later verse, as he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. This is this is chock full of apocalyptic thinking. There's references to revelation galore in this and this song.
00:49:40
Speaker
ah There's a great version the song by Joan Baez on Spotify, LiveVersion. Highly recommended. Me and our three-year-old listened to this the other day. a Great song. Love this song. ah Yeah. So like this is this is an abolitionist song is written by abolitionists. The original version was about John Brown. Right.
00:49:56
Speaker
john brown's ah ah John Brown. John Brown. yeah i John Brown, my great, youre great yeah you're great, great, great. Yeah, that's true. Well, I don't know if I don't actually know for sure if it's true, but family lore has it ah that we are really just John Brown. My great grandmother's maiden name is Brown. Yeah.
00:50:12
Speaker
And and all my family's from Kansas, as many listeners probably know this. and she had a great uncle named John, who everyone said was was a crazy abolitionist.
00:50:27
Speaker
yeah He was crazy about the abolitionist cause named John Brown in Kansas. I mean, come on Yeah. Like it was probably him, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. um So I'm pretty sure I'm related to John Brown, which is one of the coolest facts about me, in my opinion. Yeah, that is cool.
00:50:44
Speaker
Yeah. ah But yeah, the original song was John Brown's a body. Lies a moldering in the grave. Yeah. So she changed it. I think he made a little better. But I think even in that song, he's like resurrected. So it's still, yeah you know, still on theme. Yeah. So that inspired, you know, abolitionists. So there you go. Incredible.
00:51:00
Speaker
Incredible. One of the greatest songs ever. All right, given that we're at the end, near the end of the podcast, I have a question for you, for me, for everyone. Why are we always in the end times? So in the 15th century Florence, people thought it was the end times. 17th century English Civil War, thought it was the end times.
00:51:20
Speaker
There was this Millerite movement in the the eighteen hundreds which they and they they predicted 1844 that Christ would return. It didn't happen. They were really upset about that.
00:51:31
Speaker
called the Great Disappointment that yeah Jesus didn't come back. People were very upset. A 2010 Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of Americans either definitely, 23%, or probably 18% believe Jesus Christ will turn to Earth by 2050. 41%? Yeah.
00:51:48
Speaker
say yeah Wow. Yeah. And then we had the 2025 TikTok rapture. Yeah. so like, why are we always in the end times? The great disappointment is a hilariousness. It's just like, Jesus, we're not mad. We're just disappointed. Yeah.
00:52:02
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. just the interesting Interesting movement. I highly recommend like reading more about it. I want to read more about it, too. Yeah. this The Millerite movement. They're Baptists. Yeah. Baptist preacher William Miller proclaimed that Jesus would return to Earth. A particular date in October in 1844 didn't happen.
00:52:18
Speaker
People were very, very sad about it. Yeah. Why are we always why are we always in the end times? Like I grew up and my dad was always saying, Janet, this is the end times. Well, i this is this is actually part of Frank's and my story because the very first time I met his parents, in fact, this is what they talked about in the car ride from the train station your house. Do you remember that? Yeah.
00:52:38
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Like can't we just be in the times? Why do we have to be the end? Yeah. I don't know. but You have any thought that sociological speculations on this? Like this has just been going on for hundreds of years.
00:52:50
Speaker
Well, I have some theological thoughts. Okay. Sure. Whatever. Anything. Help me. Help me. Anything. Yeah. So I think, well, so specifically in like Christian theology, historically, the end times is, has been thought of as like an age rather than like a very particular short span of time. Right.
00:53:13
Speaker
Particularly an age lasting from, The establishment of the new covenant. So what was established at, you know, Pentecost to, you know, whatever now, ah like the, the entire world after the establishment of the new covenant is, know,
00:53:33
Speaker
thought to be in in end times it's it's barreling toward ah of finality kind of thing this isn't supposed to refer to a particular level of imminence or a particular short span of time but it's supposed to be in i what we might think of like a an ion right like a or aeon or however you say that word yeah eon i guess maybe ION is what they shoot in Star Wars, the ION cannons. A-E-O-N. So kind of like a I don't know, what would be a good way of just describing that term to listeners? Yeah.
00:54:14
Speaker
ah ah Isn't it called dispensation? Like the dispensation yeah and age. Right. and That's why that's so. Yeah. So going back to what we started at the beginning of the rapture, it's called like dispensationalism. yeah and That's part of the view. yeah right There's different dispensations, which I'm not quite sure what it is, but it's like yeah an age, a different, yeah, different, different age. Right. where where what age very different yeah age Each age has a different character. Right, exactly. So the age that we're in is an end times age.
00:54:42
Speaker
Yes. Whether it's a million years or 10, right? And the idea basically that like, well, yeah, all of these bad things are happening and and they're always going to be happening, right? There's always going to be turmoil. There's always going to be some kinds of persecution. There's always going to be scarcity,
00:55:02
Speaker
And violence. And that the the age that we're in recommends living in a particular way in the face of all those things with with a understanding of, you know, the hope that lies at the end of it.
00:55:18
Speaker
So but is that people are always saying that the rapture is happening? um You know, That could be boredom. Right. But what about the secular thinkers or so secular people or non-religious people who always feel like society is going collapse? This just seems like a common theme that just don't go away. Everyone, they live, they believe society collapses, they die, society goes on, a new generation is born, they grow up and they believe society is going collapse, they die and society continues onward. Yeah.
00:55:54
Speaker
What's going on? does society seem so fragile? I always think my thought is always like people need to feel like they're living in significant times to feel significant. I think I wrote this to someone the other day. i don't remember who, but if you think you're not living in significant times that, you know, could have a, an effect on how significant you see your own life. Like, Oh, I'm not living in important times. Like important times happened for me and after me, but I'm not in important times. Like that sucks. Yeah. And I think that we have a real drive to want to feel,
00:56:28
Speaker
significant and want to feel like we're living in significant, important, imminent times because the thought of that not being true makes us feel like we're, you know, lost in the vast, vast, unimaginably vast timeline of human history. Yeah, I feel like we're we're harking back to some previous episodes, our our episode prehistory, Eliade's idea of the terror of history. Yeah, deep time is scary if you're not living in a significant time and or even the end of time. that's just one damn thing after another. Right.
00:56:58
Speaker
and We don't want to get yeah to it in the middle of like this infinitely long timeline. We want at the end of it. Yeah. Yeah. um Yeah, we don't want you know maybe the world to go on for millions of years after us because then we get lost. I was kind of thinking also about our myths episode where we we talked about like the flood myth. like like Many, many, many cultures have flood myths, even ones that like weren't really near the water.
00:57:23
Speaker
Flood, great example of an apocalyptic narrative. Yeah, there's renewal after the flood. Absolutely. You got to destroy everything and then you get the renewal. yeah Very common and cross-culturally too. Yeah, I guess the idea is like creation seems so fragile.
00:57:37
Speaker
Society seems so fragile. And it's always seems like it's teetering on the edge or something. Yeah. And I mean, also, I think as civilization seems so fragile. Yeah.
00:57:48
Speaker
A lot of humans, at least me, I'm thinking of myself in particular here, are inclined towards despair, you know, or pessimism. A lot of us are pessimists. I'm a pessimist. I'm a pessimist.
00:57:59
Speaker
Yes. You told me that all the time. So, you know, i maybe there's a lot of us pessimists out there, too. Could be part of it. But I think a lot of it is just that because we exist in our bodies, like, do we I'm trying to think of how to describe this, but like the thing that seems significant to me is my own conscious point of view because it can't be any other way. Right. That's like what it is to have a conscious experience.
00:58:22
Speaker
And so we kind of project this onto the world like, well, this must be the significant time because it's what I'm consciously aware of. Yeah. This must be the significant time. But like from an objective ah standpoint, that that just might not be true.
00:58:38
Speaker
Probably isn't. Giving me a lot to think about. that This was not rehearsed, No. Yeah. yeah Actually, or do you think it was down? No, it was great. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. Why do you think we're always living in the end times?
00:58:51
Speaker
I like like what I said. like but it's things Civilization seems really complicated. There's lots lots of moving parts. yeah Things hang together in ways that we don't understand. It seems so fragile. it seems like it could be easily disrupted. How could it how could it sustain itself yeah possibly in the midst of all this? Yeah, we have a hard time understanding how large-scale systems that are overseen directly by ah individuals...
00:59:15
Speaker
self-perpetuate. Yeah. And it seems so fragile. It seems like it must just collapse. Yeah. And people have felt this way forever, ever since civilization has been around. Yeah. No, that's certainly... Something like that. Yeah. but We are like awestruck by the complexity of civilization that we can't help but feel like it's going to collapse at at every moment.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yep. Yep. I like it. Well, that's what we have for you on the apocalypse today. I really liked this topic. You had a great time. Yeah. hope you did, too. We won't be gone for three more months before the next week. No, no. is so This latest oiled the gears yeah of the podcast. Yeah, we're back we're back in the saddle. yeah so So we'll see you soon for our next episode. Thanks for joining us today.