Why is the "end of times" prospect attractive...

by Narkissos 18 Replies latest jw friends

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  Tigerman

  It isn't to me.
• 

  Honesty

  I got 'cut' from the Mickey Mouse Club. Soooo... the WT pair-o-dice was the next best thing going at the time.
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  OldSoul

  I think it is because people like to feel special. Everyone I know who really believes in end of times also believes they will be spared. And they all try to get other people to be like them, or this, or that, or him, or her. But one thing is certain, however you started out isn't good enough. You have to change A LOT to qualify as a special person.

  ICK!

  OldSoul
• 

  kls

  Because of human nature ,everything always looks greener on the other side of the fence till ya try it and see it is as brown as yours.
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  DanTheMan

  I saw the movie The Terminator when I was about 14 years old, and the whole post-apocalyptic theme of the movie made a very strong impression on me, this was back in 1984 or 1985 when the Cold War still loomed large. The movie's depiction of a dark and devastated future earth with only a few humans left on it seemed not like fiction but reality. Mel Gibson's "Mad Max" movies were similar in this respect. Also, Americans here might recall "The Day After", a made-for-TV movie about nuclear war that aired in the early 1980's.

  I also gravitated towards apocalyptic music, Metallica's early albums were particularly dark in their lyrical content, check out the lyrics to the song "Fight Fire with Fire" for a taste:

  Do, un, to others
  As, they've, done to you
  What, what, the hell is
  This, world, coming to?

  Blow, the, universe
  in, to, nothingness
  Nu-cle-ar warfare
  Shall, lay, us to rest

  Hetfield would growl and spit out lyrics like this while thrashing away on his Gibson Explorer like a madman, listening to albums like Kill 'Em All and Ride the Lightning was absolutely hypnotic for me. So, I guess by the time I was a young adult, I was primed and ready for an Armageddon cult to come along and tell me that my fears were justified, but there was a way to survive it all. I went for it, hook line and sinker.
• 

  Narkissos

  Very interesting thoughts. Thank you all.

  I feel jgnat and DanTheMan converge somehow: we all have to deal with a deep "death drive" which can find violent expressions, especially as it is repressed in a "positive-thinking" society. There is such a thing as the joy of fire. Dramatical catharsis can to an extent be worked out both by entertainment and religion. To an extent.

  Following up on Leolaia's comment, I'd say both apocalyptic and unapocalyptic religion are on the market place and there are still different buyers for each kind. Moreover, perhaps realised eschatology only makes sense against the background of futuristic eschatology: "I am the resurrection and the life" is a thrilling word to one who can say "I know he will resurrect in the resurrection of the last day". This is perhaps related to the observable fact that apocalyptic religions have a quick turnover: many people come in and many go out -- some of the latter to unapocalyptic religion.
• 

  rmt1

  Freud in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" talks about (appx) how the biologic organism has a trajectory towards death (not Jungian thanatos but similar) that it keeps trying to reach, except that it accidentally reproduces sexually and so perpetuates itself. Essentially, our conscious lives are a persistent unconscious repeating attempt to cancel out the unfathomable, unbearable intensity of existence (die) but we consciously keep short circuiting this primitive drive in the effort to consciously find a *better* way, means, method, status, position of dying. IE: we repeatedly accidentally DONT die because we repeatedly consciously try to die better - with a better income, better house, better pension, larger family, more friends, more political power, etc, et al.
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  Narkissos

  Belated welcome rmt1!

  When the Sibyl of Cumae was asked "ti theleis? -- "What do you want?" she answered "apothanein thelô -- I want to die."

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/63761/1.ashx

  Yet, maybe, there is more to "end (of) times" than "individual death"...

  Desire speaking in 3rd Isaiah (64:1): "O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence!"

  Desire of a subject banging his/her head against an order to which s/he feels irrationally but radically strange.

  So perhaps there is not such a big difference between the apocalypticist who desires the "end of times" and the unapocalyptic Gnostic who proclaims his/her strangeness to the world; except the shift from temporal to spatial metaphor.

  No wonder why Nietzsche lumped Christians and anarchists together in a common hate for reality.
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  kazar

  Heck, there's nothing I can add to these posts. They are all true and terrific. Thanks for all the posts that spoke my mind.