Apocalypse Now, Part 2--A General Theory of the End Times
Growing up in the 90s in the South, the idea of the End Times was sort of in the wind, primarily in the evangelical world and the infamous Left Behind books, which then leaked into the rest of the culture. That vision of the End Times is nonsensical and idiotic, and in fact actively pernicious in many ways (one of which I went into at some length here). But I didn’t really have any other framework to talk about or think about apocalypticism, and so I had to park it in the netherrealm of “Christian doctrines we pretend aren’t there.” Because the New Testament is almost entirely apocalyptic in tone and emphasis—it’s not just the Book of Revelation—so by excluding apocalypticism you are excluding much of the Biblical witness.
If you have been reading this site for any length of time, you know I am a fan of the work of Rene Girard. There are many reasons why this is, but one of the main reasons is that provides a different way of talking about concepts in the Christian faith that I found to be much more accessible than the standard presentation. Some of the these things were core, central ideas and motifs that came across as completely nonsensical, and even idiotic, and my lack of any ability to make heads or tails of them weakened my capacity to go “all in” on the Christian faith. But, presented and interpreted through a Girardian lens, this previously crazy ideas became comprehensible, and in fact really profound. On example of this is the idea of the Devil or Satan, but another big one is the notion of the Apocalypse or the End Times.
Apocalypse, on this reading, is the result of the interplay of three elements. The first element, and the one that backstops the process, is the notion of memetic crisis. Girard argues that the core nature of humanity as such is that we imitate, and more specifically imitate each other. This imitation is at the heart of every human intellectual and cultural achievement (as it is how we learn and convey knowledge), but it becomes a problem because we also imitate each other’s desires. This imitation of desire, or memesis, means that we will find ourselves wanting the same thing another person wants because they want it. Because we want the same thing, we get into rivalry with each other, mutually imitating each other’s desires, and thus reinforcing the rivalry. Moreover, this memesis will spread throughout social groups—a third person observes two people who desire the same thing, and in turn comes to imitate those people in their desire, thus propagating the rivalry throughout a group.
Eventually, if you let this wheel spin, you will have a memetic crisis, where an entire group or community is caught up in this rivalry. A community caught in a memetic crisis has a couple of key characteristics. The first is a total lack of differentiation. Because the fundamental mechanism at work here is imitation, everyone is imitating everyone else, and so everyone becomes the same. The second is that a community caught up in memetic crisis is hyper-violent. Indeed, if nothing intervenes, a community in memetic crisis will eventually kill most or all if its members is an orgy of destruction. Girard calls this functionally faceless, hyper-violent mass of humanity in the grips of memetic crisis the Mob. The Mob is experienced by human beings caught up in it as utterly terrifying, on almost an existential level—if you have ever been in a crowd that was getting out of control, you know what that feels like.
The second element is the Sacred. The Sacred is a social technology, in the sense that it is the way human beings have learned to stave off the Mob. At the heart of the Sacred is the Scapegoat—when memetic rivalry in a social group gets too high, one of the number is cast out or killed, and this act of casting out the Scapegoat discharges the rivalry and restores peace. But, and this is key, this process only works if you are not aware of what you are doing. So, the other part of the Sacred is the narrative that justifies why the Scapegoat isn’t really a Scapegoat, but in fact the person or persons who caused the crisis in the first place, and so getting rid of them “fixed the problem” and returned us to the natural equilibrium of harmony.
A couple of key points about the Sacred. First, it works. If you cast out Scapegoats, and you can get everyone to believe in the narrative of the Sacred, you will be able to regulate the memetic rivalry in the community and keep it stable and peaceful—well, peaceful except for the casting out of the Scapegoats. Societies that are organized according to the Scapegoating mechanism--which, to one degree or another, describes every society that has ever existed--will be able to stay organized and cohesive for a very long period of time, so long as the master narrative of the Sacred that feeds it remains intact.
It's important to keep how powerful and effective the Sacred and Scapegoating is on the front-burner at all times, because descriptions of the Sacred and Scapegoating make it sound kind of stupid. But that's because the moment you identify something as Scapegoating is the moment that you have stripped it of its Sacred gloss, and thus the moment it stops working. Things that are actually Scapegoating don't appear to be Scapegoating from the point of the view of the people doing the Scapegoating, but are instead reasonable and rational efforts to deal with objective problems and crises in society. In other words, Fight Club seems dumb precisely at the moment you realize what you are doing is Fight Club; the reason it doesn't seem dumb to the people doing it is that they don't realize it is Fight Club.
Let's take a (not) hypothetical example. Suppose the political leader of a world power announced that he was going to take measures to prevent a certain ethnic group from immigrating to said world power, on account of the fact that members of that ethnic group were responsible for a laundry list of social ills, such as rape, loss of jobs, proliferation of taco trucks, etc. Now, the efforts that this political leader takes to prevent the immigration of these people seems to many people to be monstrous and insane. But these actions seem monstrous and insane because, and only because, the story propping up the actions is nonsensical. If it were the case that this ethnic group was actually responsible for all of the laundry list of evils that our unnamed political leader attributes to them, then at least some of the actions would seem less crazy. And if you believe that those people are actually responsible for those things, then you are going to be on-board with the actions.
This leads to the second key point--the Sacred and the Scapegoat are inherently and necessarily linked. In order for the sacrifice of the Scapegoat to have the cathartic, social regulation effect, it is necessary for those participating to believe in the Sacred story. By contrast, the moment the group stops believing the Sacred story, then the sacrifice of the Scapegoat stops having a cathartic effect. It only works if you believe the lie.
Which brings us to the third major apocalyptic force, which we can call the Truth. The Truth is identified by Girard as being ultimately and originally the product of revelation, but for purposes of this analysis it has a broader construction--the Truth that a particular Scapegoat is in fact a Scapegoat, and that the Sacred story surrounding the sacrifice is nonsense. As we have seen, the Truth is like acid when applied to the Scapegoat mechanism, breaking it down and rendering it unable to function.
But, there's a problem. If you melt down the Sacred structure that orders our society, you are left with only three options. One, you can find a way to re-order your desires in a manner that does not give rise to memetic rivalry. Judaism and Christianity stand for the proposition that this is possible, and many of the great religions of the world would agree, but this is extremely hard work, requiring a life-time of personal transformation and self-discipline. So, failing that, you can replace the old Sacred with some new Sacred narrative, re-instating the tried-and-true way of regulating society, if in a transformed package. Because if that doesn't work, you are staring face to face with the Mob and the existential terror of memetic crisis run amok.
This interplay informs what I think is the most profound insight of Girardian analysis of apocalypse--telling the Truth and exposing structures of oppression leads, or at least inclines, to chaos and social dislocation. It's here that Girard gets accused of being a conservative, but the general conservative narrative is that social structures and hierarchies are good and that wearing them down leads to chaos which is bad, whereas Girard would say that social structures and hierarchies are bad, but that wearing them down without engaging in personal and social transformation leads to chaos which is bad in a different way. It also pushes hard against the easy and self-serving liberal fantasy that if enough people get Woke then everyone will join hands and sing kumbaya and everything will be swell.
In any event, the key insight here is that breakthroughs in consciousness regarding certain social or political groups are very likely to result in strong, even frantic, efforts to re-assert those hierarchies, the revitalization of other alternative hierarchies, general chaos, or a combination of all of the above. That doesn't in any way invalidate or call into question the new breakthrough, but it is a reality that must be acknowledged and dealt with.
It is the foment of old hierarchies breaking down while being re-asserted with vigor, assertions of truth and the rise of chaos that is portrayed via the literary medium of apocalyptic literature. But it is not just a literary construction--this is a reality we see in the world.
If you have been reading this site for any length of time, you know I am a fan of the work of Rene Girard. There are many reasons why this is, but one of the main reasons is that provides a different way of talking about concepts in the Christian faith that I found to be much more accessible than the standard presentation. Some of the these things were core, central ideas and motifs that came across as completely nonsensical, and even idiotic, and my lack of any ability to make heads or tails of them weakened my capacity to go “all in” on the Christian faith. But, presented and interpreted through a Girardian lens, this previously crazy ideas became comprehensible, and in fact really profound. On example of this is the idea of the Devil or Satan, but another big one is the notion of the Apocalypse or the End Times.
Apocalypse, on this reading, is the result of the interplay of three elements. The first element, and the one that backstops the process, is the notion of memetic crisis. Girard argues that the core nature of humanity as such is that we imitate, and more specifically imitate each other. This imitation is at the heart of every human intellectual and cultural achievement (as it is how we learn and convey knowledge), but it becomes a problem because we also imitate each other’s desires. This imitation of desire, or memesis, means that we will find ourselves wanting the same thing another person wants because they want it. Because we want the same thing, we get into rivalry with each other, mutually imitating each other’s desires, and thus reinforcing the rivalry. Moreover, this memesis will spread throughout social groups—a third person observes two people who desire the same thing, and in turn comes to imitate those people in their desire, thus propagating the rivalry throughout a group.
Eventually, if you let this wheel spin, you will have a memetic crisis, where an entire group or community is caught up in this rivalry. A community caught in a memetic crisis has a couple of key characteristics. The first is a total lack of differentiation. Because the fundamental mechanism at work here is imitation, everyone is imitating everyone else, and so everyone becomes the same. The second is that a community caught up in memetic crisis is hyper-violent. Indeed, if nothing intervenes, a community in memetic crisis will eventually kill most or all if its members is an orgy of destruction. Girard calls this functionally faceless, hyper-violent mass of humanity in the grips of memetic crisis the Mob. The Mob is experienced by human beings caught up in it as utterly terrifying, on almost an existential level—if you have ever been in a crowd that was getting out of control, you know what that feels like.
The second element is the Sacred. The Sacred is a social technology, in the sense that it is the way human beings have learned to stave off the Mob. At the heart of the Sacred is the Scapegoat—when memetic rivalry in a social group gets too high, one of the number is cast out or killed, and this act of casting out the Scapegoat discharges the rivalry and restores peace. But, and this is key, this process only works if you are not aware of what you are doing. So, the other part of the Sacred is the narrative that justifies why the Scapegoat isn’t really a Scapegoat, but in fact the person or persons who caused the crisis in the first place, and so getting rid of them “fixed the problem” and returned us to the natural equilibrium of harmony.
A couple of key points about the Sacred. First, it works. If you cast out Scapegoats, and you can get everyone to believe in the narrative of the Sacred, you will be able to regulate the memetic rivalry in the community and keep it stable and peaceful—well, peaceful except for the casting out of the Scapegoats. Societies that are organized according to the Scapegoating mechanism--which, to one degree or another, describes every society that has ever existed--will be able to stay organized and cohesive for a very long period of time, so long as the master narrative of the Sacred that feeds it remains intact.
It's important to keep how powerful and effective the Sacred and Scapegoating is on the front-burner at all times, because descriptions of the Sacred and Scapegoating make it sound kind of stupid. But that's because the moment you identify something as Scapegoating is the moment that you have stripped it of its Sacred gloss, and thus the moment it stops working. Things that are actually Scapegoating don't appear to be Scapegoating from the point of the view of the people doing the Scapegoating, but are instead reasonable and rational efforts to deal with objective problems and crises in society. In other words, Fight Club seems dumb precisely at the moment you realize what you are doing is Fight Club; the reason it doesn't seem dumb to the people doing it is that they don't realize it is Fight Club.
Let's take a (not) hypothetical example. Suppose the political leader of a world power announced that he was going to take measures to prevent a certain ethnic group from immigrating to said world power, on account of the fact that members of that ethnic group were responsible for a laundry list of social ills, such as rape, loss of jobs, proliferation of taco trucks, etc. Now, the efforts that this political leader takes to prevent the immigration of these people seems to many people to be monstrous and insane. But these actions seem monstrous and insane because, and only because, the story propping up the actions is nonsensical. If it were the case that this ethnic group was actually responsible for all of the laundry list of evils that our unnamed political leader attributes to them, then at least some of the actions would seem less crazy. And if you believe that those people are actually responsible for those things, then you are going to be on-board with the actions.
This leads to the second key point--the Sacred and the Scapegoat are inherently and necessarily linked. In order for the sacrifice of the Scapegoat to have the cathartic, social regulation effect, it is necessary for those participating to believe in the Sacred story. By contrast, the moment the group stops believing the Sacred story, then the sacrifice of the Scapegoat stops having a cathartic effect. It only works if you believe the lie.
Which brings us to the third major apocalyptic force, which we can call the Truth. The Truth is identified by Girard as being ultimately and originally the product of revelation, but for purposes of this analysis it has a broader construction--the Truth that a particular Scapegoat is in fact a Scapegoat, and that the Sacred story surrounding the sacrifice is nonsense. As we have seen, the Truth is like acid when applied to the Scapegoat mechanism, breaking it down and rendering it unable to function.
But, there's a problem. If you melt down the Sacred structure that orders our society, you are left with only three options. One, you can find a way to re-order your desires in a manner that does not give rise to memetic rivalry. Judaism and Christianity stand for the proposition that this is possible, and many of the great religions of the world would agree, but this is extremely hard work, requiring a life-time of personal transformation and self-discipline. So, failing that, you can replace the old Sacred with some new Sacred narrative, re-instating the tried-and-true way of regulating society, if in a transformed package. Because if that doesn't work, you are staring face to face with the Mob and the existential terror of memetic crisis run amok.
This interplay informs what I think is the most profound insight of Girardian analysis of apocalypse--telling the Truth and exposing structures of oppression leads, or at least inclines, to chaos and social dislocation. It's here that Girard gets accused of being a conservative, but the general conservative narrative is that social structures and hierarchies are good and that wearing them down leads to chaos which is bad, whereas Girard would say that social structures and hierarchies are bad, but that wearing them down without engaging in personal and social transformation leads to chaos which is bad in a different way. It also pushes hard against the easy and self-serving liberal fantasy that if enough people get Woke then everyone will join hands and sing kumbaya and everything will be swell.
In any event, the key insight here is that breakthroughs in consciousness regarding certain social or political groups are very likely to result in strong, even frantic, efforts to re-assert those hierarchies, the revitalization of other alternative hierarchies, general chaos, or a combination of all of the above. That doesn't in any way invalidate or call into question the new breakthrough, but it is a reality that must be acknowledged and dealt with.
It is the foment of old hierarchies breaking down while being re-asserted with vigor, assertions of truth and the rise of chaos that is portrayed via the literary medium of apocalyptic literature. But it is not just a literary construction--this is a reality we see in the world.
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