Doomsday

Apocalypse Thought as a Function of the Need for Human Identity

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On the Title
“Sense” – Just occurred to me: See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sense for the definitions of “sense.”  The title is apt and an excellent summary of Kermode’s main arguments.  I was thinking in terms of sense as in logic and sense as in prediction. Would be interesting for further discussion.

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Kermode assigns a function to fears of apocalypse.   The beginning of time obscured to man and an uncertain future equally dark for eternity, the idea of apocalypse – or the idea that there is some end, some finiteness – serves to orient him within a frame of time and history.  Dividing the intemporal into small pieces of history, however arbitrary these divisions, renders time’s “rectilinear” property manageable to the human mind, or “immanent”.  These so-called saecula, have persisted throughout history, and have traditionally been ascribed great importance.  In each generation, the designation of an oppressor or generalized antagonist serves as the Antichrist, a sign to which apocalyptic believers harken as evidence that the end is near.  Though apocalypse has failed to arrive for millennia, the frenzy endures with “extraordinary resilience.” Through what Kermode calls a “persistence of fictions,” apocalyptic faith ultimately creates a “perpetual calendar of human anxiety.”  Further, apocalypse breeds and is tied to mythology, particularly that of the Empire, perpetuating for it a role in human identity.

Kermode reduces apocalyptic fears to a device for satisfying the fundamental human psychological need for identity.  Remove for a moment all religious associations with apocalypse.  Humans are placed in the muddle/middle of some time-space continuum, unsure where their lives intersect with that of the universe.  Fear of the world’s demise, places each human existence closer to one end of this continuum.  That is, it gives context for the state of human existence.  From this perspective, the short time frame of existence gives a sense of urgency, of mystery and above all, definition.  We take for granted the requirement for an “end” in literature.  All stories, Kermode points out, must obviously have an end.  As a literary device, and if we are to take human existence as nothing more than a grand story, the seeming futility of predicting apocalypse has value in itself.  As in literature, audience expectation, is what allows the sense of peripetaia to be effectively wrought.  It is the reversal of logic that gives the story its satisfying end.  And if logic and science are one, then does this not contradict the the common perception that nature is immutable?  Kermode does not deal with the nature of nature specifically, but only the laws of nature as determined by man.  The scientific method is only a collection of observations and predictions about what we expect to happen based on past experience.  We create laws of nature; if they do not confirm to what we observe, we change the laws until we are satisfied that what we see conforms to some prescription. If cannot break free of them, we must make sense of them.  So, the projection of meaning, in this case, impending apocalypse, onto events coincidental with anticipated apocalypse is no more than the restructuring of time around apocalypse to create context.