Keywords For The Apocalypse
A Glossary of Words and Terms to Help Make Sense of a Rapidly Changing World Presented in Generation Apocalypse Webzine’s Editor Nathaniel Murphy’s Column The Beautiful & The Doomed .
Table of Contents
- Keywords For The Apocalypse
- Keywords and Misunderstandings – Both Personal and Political
- The Pox: Naming Our Apocalypse
- Keywords For The Apocalypse
I’m taking inspiration for this project from one of the great rhetoricians of the twentieth century, Raymond Williams. And If you’re not sure exactly what a rhetorician is supposed to do, basically they study how people actually understand the stuff that’s being communicated to them – a very useful skill indeed. And certainly good people to listen to. The good ones, at least – but that goes without saying for any group of people, doesn’t it? But one of the interesting thing about people is that there a lot of them. Like, a crap-ton. So, it figures there should be a lot of people that are good at any given thing – and this is one of the reasons I love humanity: when we shine, we shine.
Anyway, if you haven’t heard of Raymond Williams before, don’t worry, you’ll still be young enough after finishing this article to dive into some of his work. Tbh the only reason I’ve heard of him is because my Grad Advisor happened to be quite an accomplished rhetorician in her own right and reading Raymond Williams is a good example of me actually listening to some of her good advice. So, yay me! And thank you, Susan, off course, too lol.
A Quick Aside For Those Who Don’t Do Subtlety, Even When It’s Not That Subtle
Centering myself in such a buffoonishly obvious way in an anecdote about receiving good advice is meant to draw your attention to the person I am thanking as the source for the recommendation, because while I may not be an expert in rhetoric and know who’s who in what is one of the world’s oldest academic disciplines, but I did in fact study with and have as the chair of my phd committee someone who does have that expertise and whose advice on the topic I absolutely trust (and on many others too of course! – I can’t tell if that came off weird lol).
Anyway, my point is: take it as good advice, not because it’s coming from me, but because I’m just passing along a solid reading suggestion for people who want to understand their world a bit better from a person who really is an expert in an important part of it. Simple as.
Keywords and Misunderstandings – Both Personal and Political
Anyway, Raymond Williams wrote a book called Keywords where he just looked at some important political, social, etc, terms that often have completely different meanings that reflect completely different world views, completely different value systems and shared beliefs. So this can lead to conflict over what the terms mean – this is half of what the “culture wars” are these days: one side (tbh it’s usually the side that has untold billions of dollars backing it and the unfettered use of all the biggest media platforms in the world, if you dig what I’m plantin) trying to muddy the meaning of the “other side’s” words or phrases or slogans to the point where it’s not worth it to use them anymore because they get tired of trying to explain the “actual” meaning of the term over and over. And for real – the current state of the culture wars have taken this process into absurd overdrive. All in all, I don’t think your average “culture warrior” or whatever they call themselves is handling the collapse very well, if I’m being completely forthright.
That’s just the “squeaky wheel” problem with having different and often conflicting meanings in different people’s perceptions of important words or phrases, though. Another very big and very significant problem is that people can tend to talk past each other – they aren’t engaged in a conflict over the meaning of the term because they assume that their meaning is the only meaning, so then everyone must mean the same thing by it that they do, obviously…
I’m sure we can all come up with tons of examples of someone “taking things the wrong way”, sometimes to disastrous consequences – how many relationships (not just romantic, but all types of friendships or even familial ties) have ended because someone took something in a way that the person saying or doing it never even considered as a way to take it? It’s a very human thing to happen. It’s one of the bummer parts of being human tbh.
[W]hen people talk past each other about important societal-wide issues then a lot of very real, very not-awesome stuff can result – witness Our Apocalypse.
Anyway, personal disasters suck, no one would deny that, but when people talk past each other about important societal-wide issues then a lot of very real, very not-awesome stuff can result – witness Our Apocalypse. So Williams put together a list of what he took to be some of the most important ones that have these completely different meanings that really do lead people to misunderstand each other in very high stakes situations. Btw Keywords was written a while ago, so some of the entries are gonna be outdated – easy enough to skip those ones though, and there’s more than enough of the interesting and still relevant ones to make it worth going down a Keywords rabbit hole or two.
So, as I was saying, this project is inspired by his – it’s not the same as his project. (I’m not trying to sound glib here, this is an important distinction that gets lost more and more these days. I have no idea why honestly, this trend kinda baffles me, but something that I’ve noticed more and more in the way that a lot of people talk about any kind of artistic adaptation, however loosely defined. Idk, it’s weird and I’m not a fan of it.
The Pox: Naming Our Apocalypse
Anyway, “Keywords of the Apocalypse” is inspired by Raymond Williams Keywords, but it is also very much inspired by the Apocalypse, too – brand new context and all, old meanings of some things losing relevance while new meanings proliferate. Heck even the term “Apocalypse” is a rather important keyword these days – I don’t mean anything religious or mystical at all by the term, but I know that a lot of people hear the word Apocalypse and think mostly of supernatural shades of the term. That’s fine, but also why it’s important to have other fallback terms like the Collapse, or my preferred term, The Pox, which I got from Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Talents.
By the way, if there are two books that everyone who hasn’t already should read right now then they are the Parable of the Sewer and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler. I know I’m not the only person out there saying this these days, either (which might tell you something in itself, eh) because those two books are the best source for understanding what is happening in the US and many other countries right now.
The Master Storyteller’s Warning
[Octavia Butler] was a Master Storyteller giving her society a WARNING
This is not because Octavia Butler could see the future – she did not predict anything. Listen to her own words about it here, the Parables are “if things keep going the ways they are” stories; they are warnings not predictions, and it so happens that Octavia Butler was one of the best humans at seeing the Big Picture who existed. She was a Master Storyteller using her voice to give her society a WARNING – read the Parables as warnings about specific social problems that if they don’t get dealt with in meaningful ways will end up tearing that society apart (this is the part of the story we’re living through now, in case you’re following along with Pox at home). The Parables are perfect books for reading groups, too, and in fact some of the editions come with discussion questions already (take advantage of that type of stuff, that’s what it’s there for).
The Battle For What Comes Next
Anyway, the Pox – The Apocalypse, Our Apocalypse, what makes us all Generation Apocalypse or GenPox in the first place – The Pox is a brand new context: it is a complete departure from what came before (the world you grew up and took for granted would continue well past you) and that we are only at the very beginning of. The Big (Generally Bad) Transitions have already started – climate, political, social, cultural, etc, etc. And they are all linked in so many ways – and they are all changing faster than pretty much anyone thought. I know it’s all happening two or three decades earlier than I thought, and I know from experience that I tend to be on the “it’s gonna happen sooner rather than later” end of the spectrum as far as those things go.
So, yeah, the Battle for What Comes Next that has been coming to a head for the past 3 or 4 decades is finally here. It’s been raging for about a decade now, and if this kind of framing is news to you, then there is a really good chance that as things stand now, you have pretty much 0% say in What Comes Next, even though it will 100% affect every part of your life, as well as everything and everyone you love. Cheers!
Seriously, don’t feel bad though, just find some people who are talking about a future that you would actually really want to live in – then do stuff with them. Simple as.
Btw, in case you were wondering who’s winning the Battle for What Comes Next at the moment: it’s a big battlefield, but you can usually tell which side is winning in different places by checking to see if the people in charge are doing things to make their society and planet more livable and generally better for everyone, or if they are gearing up to genocide and/or corporate merger their way into the stupidest and cruelest apocalypse ever. It’s not subtle.
New Keywords For The Pox Era
Anyway, Keywords for the Apocalypse is my attempt to unmuddy the meanings of some terms that are important for the twenty-first century, maybe even help a few people not talk past each other, maybe even help some lucky few find love…
Lol. Seriously, though, I’m gonna start putting some the articles in The Beautiful & The Doomed under the heading Keywords for the Apocalypse, which I will also add links to here, like chapters. It’ll be fun.
Generally, the types of Keywords I’ll be doing will fit into certain categories – words or phrase that I think have far outlived their usefulness, words or phrases that are still quite useful despite having their popular meanings become super muddy or sometimes just ridiculously stupid; and/or words or phrases that I think should be used more – both in terms of spoken and written more as well as being put into practice. Alright, then, let’s get on with the first few:
