- A Doomer's Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse:
Table Of Contents
- 1. Cue The Music
- 2. 2020, Or Year 1 Of The Collapse
- 3. It All Frays Apart
- 4. PrePox to MidPox
- 5. The Many Uses Of Lamentation
- 6. Doomer Is As Doomer Does
- 7. Battle Of The CenturyTM: The Doomers vs The Deathcultists Edition
- 8. Battle Of The CenturyTM: Seeing vs Believing Edition
- 9. Why So Many people want to take a big poo on the big picture
- 10. A Quick Metaphor on Metaphors
- 11. Let them Cook!
- 12. some general outlines of the big picture (spoiler alert: it ain’t lookin good for ya, pal
- 13. “global warming“… “Climate change“… “Planet Death”
- 14. one last call to pack, then I'm good…
- 15. Apocalyptic Wagers: The Case For Choosing LIFE In Spite Of It All
- 16. Speaking Truth To Power: Where Justice Goes To Die
Welcome to A Doomer’s Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse – which began as a way for me to figure out how to navigate the Stupidest Apocalypse Ever, because like many of my fellow Human Beings, I did not handle it very well at the beginning.
I’m not saying that I’m handling it splendidly now, but I am definitely doing waaaay better than I was when I set out on this Path.
Ngl Total Nervous Breakdowns are not fun in any possible way – and having exactly zero Hope for the Future is more than a little disappointing.
One of the principle claims that I made in my dissertation is that Hope is a major driving force of Behavior because it points you in a certain direction, or towards a particular Utopian Horizon as I referred to it. What’s more is that we can (and should imho) use a Shared Utopian Horizon to guide the building of Projects and Institutions as some of us try to claw our way towards a Livable Future.
When I finished my dissertation at the end of 2019 I was very cautiously optimistic that we could possibly do this, however much of a long-shot. However, by the end of 2021, I was not longer optimistic about the Future. In fact, like many others, I saw so many of the Paths Towards Good Possible Futures get destroyed in orgiastic displays of cruelty and stupidity that I interpreted it as the destruction of ALL possible Good Paths.
I was completely Hopeless about the Future – and let me tell you that whether or not Hope is a motivating force for Behavior, the absence of Hope definitely causes a corresponding lack of motivation. It wasn’t awesome, and it took me a couple few years to be able to do anything at all.
The first thing I did as a way to force motivation on myself was to try to analyze my mental breakdown – and what came out of this then became A Doomer’s Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse, which started as a pithy and ironic title because when I thought of it I still had no real Hope and felt anything but all right.
There is an old saying among fine art counterfeiters, “Fake It Til You Make It”, that applied to my situation – because continuing on with the Doomer’s Guide Project led me to the Generation Apocalypse Webzine Project which led me to The Beautiful & The Doomed Project, which has led me to think about and articulate the things I’ve been struggling with – which has ultimately led me to Hope again.
A very cautious and guarded Hope; a fuzzy yet delicate Hope that despite it’s fragility has begun to light up Utopian Horizons for me again – and while my Hope Muscle may be a bit atrophied from disuse this Guide is an aid in rehabilitating it.
If recent Events and the state of World has your Hope Muscle feeling Broken Beyond Saving, then please join me in my Quest to finally get right with the Apocalypse.
A Doomer’s Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse:
Table Of Contents
1. Cue The Music
This section is basically the opening credits for what’s to follow: my Lament for the World & the people in it – as well as a Call to find the others out there who see the World & Care about it the same way as I do.
2. 2020, Or Year 1 Of The Collapse
Ahhh… who doesn’t look back at 2020 with a certain nostalgic fondness? me and millions upon millions of others, that’s who.
In this section, I situate my own personal collapse inside the much larger Societal Collapse that were both set in motion with those wild events of 2020.
TBH I wasn’t a big fan of either. And since I’m being honest, I gotta say I’m still not.
In this section, I also start to explain what I mean by “Doomer” & how Doomers see the World.
3. It All Frays Apart
One thing that gets lost a lot these days is that Societal Collapses take time & it’s not going to Collapse in any sort of uniform way – and while the general Pattern is pretty damn predictable, the exact details will never be. They will always be shocking, but at this point shouldn’t be the least bit surprising anymore. Oh well, nevertheless…
4. PrePox to MidPox
So, The Pox – Our Apocalypse – and yeah, I’m borrowing the term from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents. if you’re interested in seeing why, you can here.
Anyway, this short section is simply about coming to grips with the fact that The Pox is here and not in some vague Future that everyone knows is coming but also somehow doesn’t really believe it will get here. Well…here we are: the Beginning of the End.
5. The Many Uses Of Lamentation
Tbh I only really talk about two, maybe three, uses of Lamentation in this section – but I thought it sounded better this way, and more importantly if you find yourself counting something like this as a way to do a lil “Gotcha!” on someone: please stop that shit, it’s embarrassing.
Anyway, the two main uses of Lamentation that I talk about are for therapeutic reasons (this is the obvious one) & as a “Call to Pack”, or an attempt to find my people (other Doomers).
6. Doomer Is As Doomer Does
This section is where I lay out the three core components of being a Doomer – only 6 sections in to get the basic definition of the whole thing, so not too much rambling then. (I’m hoping you don’t notice that it’s 6 out of 14, which may make it look like I ramble a bit too much – but that can’t be right…)
Anyway, the core Doomer attributes are that you can’t help but see “The Big Picture” wherever you look; you Care deeply about Humanity and deeply about the World – deeply enough to make it half of your fkn personality.
7. Battle Of The CenturyTM:
The Doomers vs The Deathcultists Edition
In the Battle For What Comes Next, not everyone who sees The Big Picture is on the same side – which is crazy because one of the sides is literally Life, and a part of me still can’t wrap my head around the fact that so many people have joined this Battle on the side against Life. But alas!
Anyway, this section is a bit of “know your enemy” type of analysis. Fun!
8. Battle Of The CenturyTM:
Seeing vs Believing Edition
As The Pox unfolds, there is an Epidemic of Cognitive Dissonance that may just be our greatest Obstacle to actually getting a Livable Future. Honestly, this is probably the thing that breaks more Doomers than anything else.
This section is an early attempt at understanding the Cognitive Dissonance Epidemic that is a major driving force of the Stupidest Apocalypse Ever. I’ve come back to this question from a few different angles in some of the subsequent articles that I’ve added to the Guide.
9. Why So Many people want to take a big poo on the big picture
This section is devoted to explaining why people who don’t see The Big Picture in the same way as Doomers tend to think of it as a complete waste of time or worse. If you don’t elicit this reaction when talking about The Big Picture that you see, then there’s an excellent chance that you are not in fact a Doomer. Congrats, you earned it.
Seriously though, this is section is about that reaction as well as some of general outlines of what I mean by seeing The Big Picture – I’ll keep filling in this outline for the rest of the Doomer’s Guide as well as in other articles in the Beautiful & The Doomed column.
10. A Quick Metaphor on Metaphors
This section is one large digression about Language – it’s uses and it’s beauty, specifically when it comes to metaphors. But it’s also about Human Knowledge in general, and how it is almost exclusively made up of some individual or group saying “Good enough for now” at some point in Processes that are basically infinite.
That’s not a bad thing btw, it’s pretty much what makes the accumulation of Knowledge possible – and if you are one of the shrinking numbers of people who value Knowledge in general then read on for a very brief take on it.
11. Let them Cook!
One of my favorite things about Human Beings is that we all have different things that we’re passionate about – things we pour ourselves into, learn about from a thousand different angles, and sometimes get really, really good at – then we get to share the fruits our Expertise with each other! I love that shit!
Seriously, I’m a huge fan of Expertise – and while this section is partly an attempt at justifying my own expertise in a field that doesn’t actually exist, it’s really about how we as a Society tend to devalue Expertise – and how maybe we shouldn’t do that.
12. some general outlines of the big picture (spoiler alert: it ain’t lookin good for ya, pal
In this section, I turn my Critical Eye towards The Big Picture to see what some of the likely Paths for the Future that we as a species will be hurtling down. This is not an optimistic section.
13. “global warming“… “Climate change“… “Planet Death”
Ngl this section is kind of a bummer – but that sort thing tends to happen during an Apocalypse. Bummers I mean. Planet Death, too. In fact, that’s one of the major things that people shouldn’t find appealing about Apocalypses, and yet ours is driven by several groups of people who seem to be aiming for it. Not a fan tbh.
Anyway, this section is about how we need a new term for what is happening to the planet because “Climate Change” has been so thoroughly & intentionally muddied as a concept that it’s no longer really very useful. Same as “Global Warming” before it. The Enemies of Life are nothing if not persistent, and seeing how that’s the number one measure of success for propaganda, here we are again.
14. one last call to pack, then I’m good…
This was the original final section of A Doomer’s Guide To Getting Right With The Apocalypse, and to be totally honest, the advice was pretty meek because at the time I was still very much in the Faking It phase in my quest to Make It with regards to having Hope for the Future again.
Seriously though, the guidance I have to give might seem a bit on the meager side – but no one thought there was gonna be a magic bullet, right? Not if you made it this far lol. But here’s the thing – a small change in Direction has bigger and bigger effects the further down the Path you go until one day you are nowhere near where you would’ve been had you not made that slight adjustment way back when.
And since this is no longer the final section, this now marks the point in the Doomer’s Guide where Faking It is giving birth to Making It as I lower my gaze from the furthest reaches of our Shared Utopian Horizon and focus on the Islands Of Good-In-Spite-Of-It-All that are still reachable even if we never make it as far into the journey as we once thought possible.
15. Apocalyptic Wagers: The Case For Choosing LIFE In Spite Of It All
Writing this section really helped to solidify a change that I had been going through over the past half year or so as Hope has slowly creeped back into my life. Honestly, I had been afraid to put these fragile little Hopes through the analytic ringer until I saw a George Carlin quote about using not giving a shit as a coping mechanism in this World.
I thought to myself, “Lol that’s just Pascal’s Wager for Doomers”, and one thing leading to another, this section is my attempt to follow where that thought led. Ultimately, it led me to the conclusion that thinking this way is a trap and that the Wager that Doomers should be following leads to defiant action not melancholic resignation.
16. Speaking Truth To Power: Where Justice Goes To Die
This article started life as a rant against the phrase “Speak Truth To Power” for my Keywords For The Apocalypse Project, but grew into Big Picture analysis of how we talk about Power and also what we can do about it. I’m still keeping it in the Keywords Project, but I’m also adding it to the Doomer’s Guide because it does develop a lot of the thoughts presented earlier in the Guide.
Anyway, if you’re curious about my take on Fascism and how it relates to other kinds of Political Power then this section is a good place to stop in for a quick bite.
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