Doomsday

Rosen agrees with Stroizer in the sense that she sees apocalypse as being a force by which to establish identity. And she says it is kept alive not only for its inherent value (in religious or moral terms), but also as a commodity: like Stroizer, she points out that apocalypse has been used to comfort people. But more than Stroizer, Rosen argues why apocalyptic theory as “sense-making paradigm” is superior to other theories by which a people could establish themselves in context to their histories.
Apocalypse helps make sense of crises by seeing these as part of an underlying master plan. But, by enumerating those events or states that we perceive as apocalyptic, we highlight those which are imperfect. Rosen believes this functions as a sort of social criticism of society and of apocalyptic thought itself.

“Apocalypse seems at least to accept and perhaps to condone the abdication of personal responsibility for our fate.”

Last week, I mentioned (ever so fleetingly, just like I would be telling you about what I ate for lunch) that I am a self-professed fatalist. Prof. Quinby thought this was interesting in light of fatalism of predestination in Calvinist and that is central to the Fundamentalist Christian belief system and much apocalyptic belief generally.

Does this make me apocalyptic? Belief in some sort of apocalypse is central to Judeo-Christian belief. And, yes, I suppose it does. But more on this later.

It is interesting that Rosen claims that America is not becoming more secularized. The data she cite point to increased religious feeling among young people. These are curious statistics. I don’t find it surprising that this may be true. I just don’t feel that there is a trend toward deeper religiosity in the country, at least as popular American culture is concerned. If anything, pop culture has moved sharply away from religiosity and instead is preaching a loosening of (traditionally religious) morals and dismissal of faith in god. I don’t think this debate is anything new. It’s been around for millennia but the extent to which the church has been separated from the state and establishment is unprecedented.

Another interesting point is that Rosen thinks that apocalypse has nearly universal appeal. While belief in apocalypse may be increased by persecution, it is not a prerequisite, and only perceived persecution or even disruption of normality may suffice.

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The challenge to apocalyptic thought is what underlies post-modern thinking. The idea is to up-end the traditional “sense-making” paradigms and to rethink long-held systems of moral code.

Tension between perceived world of the narrator and the “real” world of the film, and the destruction of one and creation of the other. Donnie Darko (2001).

Post-modernism – restructuring of time. A return to the cyclical time, to where there are no strict beginnings and endings.

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Moore — it was not I who decided how the axe would fall, it was you.
– same idea in film; implicating the viewer (favorite of Hitchcock and others) you were thinking same thing