In 2003, US critic Fredric Jameson recounted the view that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism. In 2011, the thought found its way into the speech of the Occupy movement, which had sought to imagine a form of social organisation beyond capitalism. In 2018, Jameson’s intended point remains true: it is now a hard labour to free our political imagination from the crises of recent centuries. Still, it’s always been an easy work to imagine the end of the world.
It’s not just easy but potentially thrilling to imagine the end-times. People have been doing it for some time.
When I was 12 and Ronald Reagan was president, I was electrified by the possibility of apocalypse. When I was 15, Reagan was still president, but by this time, his eschatology had become rather dull. It still seemed likely that this clownish man would bring us all to death, but it was no longer very exciting. When Reagan spoke of the “Evil Empire” and made claims for a “Star Wars” program of great lethality and cost, I no longer fancied myself surviving. The Day After was a bad option. Finding my way to ground zero and melting in a second was the better option.
In a time of Katniss Everdeen, The Handmaid’s Tale and other popular stories with brave white ladies surviving at their centre, perhaps Australian high school kids, even Australian adults, imagine annihilation differently. Once, we were the sort who imagined ourselves living, or dying, as a mass. Now, it’s quite possible that we have adopted the US tendency to imagine ourselves as brave, individual survivors.
As you are doubtless aware, the USA has long enjoyed its doomsday fetish. Realtors in that nation sell off old missile bases to the paranoid, and the “bug out bag” — a survivalist toolkit — can be purchased pre-packed to appease your inner Kaczynski. Elite survivalists, including the grandson of Milton Friedman, have commenced construction of a sovereign nation off the Tahiti coast to protect themselves not only from death but taxes and the old National Geographic program Doomsday Preppers is no longer a document of crazies who fill their front rooms with hydroponic veg and their back gardens with protein-rich fish, but a Netflix favourite.
Why? Why would one wish to survive without others? I cannot think of a life of foraging in solitude and fear. If a zombie virus claims the nation, I plan to purchase then consume a bucket of fast-acting opioids. Just before the point of fatal overdose, I will place myself upon the nature-strip. Let the undead eat me but not claim me as one of their indifferent own.
In my view, and long in the view of many, “prepping” is the pastime of the ultra-right. While it is certainly true that human history may soon be lost to climate change and it is possibly true that even I might hesitate before offering my dead flesh to reanimated monsters for lunch, it is also true that survivalists have not been motivated by the goal of survival alone. It is radically thick individualism that permits a teenager to imagine herself simultaneously happy and alone in a nuclear winter, a British Prime Minister to claim that there is “no such thing as society” or a white supremacist to believe that he could possibly be happy alone in the woods without evidence of the hatred that defines him.
But, get this: prepping is not just for the young, the neoliberal and the damaged anymore. It’s gone mainstream!
Since the inauguration of Donald Trump, self-identified “liberal” and even “left” preppers have been sharing tips on seed banks and buoying the bug-out sector. Meet Andrea! She dehydrates all her fruit and dreams of an apocalypse. She calls herself “left-wing”.
But, then again, so do many right-leaning liberals.
It’s not that prepping has gone mainstream; radically thick individualism has. A leftist does not dream of flourishing alone by her own wits, but works toward the flourishing of all. A person committed to the genuine and sustainable advancement of human history doesn’t take a weekend course in edible mycology or hoard silver. A person committed to the elevation of the Great Individual does such things. Then, she watches The Hunger Games and imagines herself as a brave and exquisite survivor.
If human history is to end, I’m going with it. If human history is to be truly imagined, it must be fought for not by individual prepping, but mass action.
Nice work Helen. I ran out of baked beans this morning, so I guess I’ll keep on shopping and otherwise attempting to commune with a low impact lifestyle.
As someone who considers themselves very left-wing, and is in the midst of a very long spell of eco-anxiety (already checking out real estate in Otago) thank you for some much-needed perspective.
“Après nous, le déluge” – was uttered by the French aristocracy to threaten the common people that if they did not keep the aristocracy in power, the end of the world would ensue. Well, they did away with the aristocracy but the world continued on anyway.
Leaders of so-called nuclear nations make the same threat today. Many of us were silly enough (in fact, most of us) to believe it when we were told, “you’re all gonna die, you’re all gonna die! I guess it sounds more impressive in French. But it sounds scary and they sound important. More fool us.
We should ignore Trump and Kim and Reagan and all the rest, and plant potatoes in the back garden anyway. We might even hear some real birdsong while we are turning the spade.
Roger. My kipflers were a disaster last year!
Roger. My kipflers were a disaster last year!
Perhaps talking to them would inspire the seedlings to potate. A chair and and a glass of wine might help you expound at length on matters er, potentious.
But only one benighted nation had the motto “better dead than Red” (after you, septic) and, without shame or even the slightest embarrassment or hint of cog-dis, formulated the aptly name “policy” of M.A.D.
It could apply now. Don’t they currently have a majority of Red states?
Worth reading the RationalWiki entry on survivalism, including the Survivalism in practice section. In the examples of Somalia & Argentina (the economic collapse of 2001-2), the presumptions of the US survivalists turned out to be pretty far off.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Survivalism
Note this bit about Argentina.
“The logic of “bugging out” to a distant rural area to escape the chaos in the cities did not hold up in practice, as major cities like Buenos Aires and Cordoba were often the first places to see order and services restored. By contrast, rural survivalist compounds often found themselves outgunned and outnumbered by criminal gangs with nobody to help them for miles. Many such compounds were later discovered by the authorities looted and abandoned, sometimes with their would-be survivalist owners murdered.”
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Survivalism#Survivalism_in_practice
Chill out – neither climate change nor even nook winter will end the world, just organised (sic!) society.
History, albeit in shreds and pieces, tends to survive to be found and, usually, misinterpreted by those that come after.
Dear MzRaz perhaps is too young & innocent to remember the alt-tek/self sufficiency movements which followed the hippie daze – that was predicated on prepping for the crapocalypse in whatever form it arrived.
Sure, it turned out to be a mite difficult for over entitled, urban wankers and the vast majority went back to being consuming units in a bread-head economy but some made a success of it. (Hint, the ones where the gender roles were not simply transferred from the morass they were leaving behind – blokes sitting around pontificating when the hay needed winning or too drunk/stoned to dig the garden whilst the distaff side did what they always do, coped with the kids in harsh conditions.)