mike sucks at writing

i want to be clear: i don’t believe that the world will “end” or that there will be any kind of apocalyptic event that will alter the face of the human world. In fact, i believe that is the great tragedy of the modern world.

But lately i’ve been thinking a lot about the end of all things. It’s hard not to with the rapture passing us by and 2012 right around the corner. And, as always with these types of musings, i turn to the stories that i know for inspiration, insight, and context. It seems–”seems” because i don’t like making broad statements without doing the research, and i’m really not in the mood for research–like there have been an increasing number of books, movies, video games, and other entertainment that have been focused on this idea of the end of the world. most zombie movies classify, and those have been more prevalent, as well as some science fiction, and also speculative fiction–which is my new favorite name for a genre. But why? Why are these types of stories more and more popular? Why are we so eager to watch the world burn? i have some ideas.

We live in an age without a great war. Not that there aren’t wars and there aren’t tragedies, but there is no Great War; no Us against Them, no Good vs. Evil. It seems like every conflict from that in Vietnam forward has been a divided issue, politically and morally. Vietnam has been a rich arena for fiction and nonfiction because of the internal conflict that it caused, but there are very few strong protagonists in those jungles. it’s really hard to root for the men depicted in those stories. And that’s really what it’s about, having someone to root for. it’s what we’re all looking for in every story. Maybe we get it and maybe we don’t, but we always want a hero. There will be people who will argue, and they have every right to do so, but i think people like that are still trying to rebel from the mainstream, when really, the idea of the Hero is so much older than that. The reason that WW2 stories are STILL being told is that it was a time that was ripe for heroes, in no small part because we have clearly identified an antagonist and agreed that what they did was Evil.

But what if you don’t want to tell yet another WW2 story? What else is left? The vast majority of Americans have not been in that kind of peril for their entire lives. Most of us will never be. But, i think we all want to be, in some animal part of ourselves. How many people talk about the zombie apocalypse and believe they would be the shotgun-wielding, smirk-wearing protagonist, unable to admit that they would more likely end up as food? Most, in my experience, and yet, when you watch those movies, it’s generally a 1 to 1000 ratio of heroes to horde. We all want to believe that we could rise to that occasion; that we wouldn’t panic and do something stupid like David does in The Winchester Pub; that we wouldn’t be one of the “fatties” or the guy who forgot to “double-tap.” Most of all, we want to feel alive and empowered in that way that rising up from a tragedy or some other impossible circumstance can bring. Lord knows, i would rather be rigging spikes to the front of my Subaru than sitting in this office chair begging the clock to go faster so that i can go home and do laundry. In one of my favorite brain-candy-movies, Constantine, the angel Gabriel explains his/her motivation for attempting to loose the son of the Devil on the world: “It’s only in the face of horror that you truly find your nobler selves.”

And so we imagine what we would do if the dead rose up against us, or a bomb wiped out the majority of life in the world and we were the only ones left, or the world has just crumbled and our resources are scarce. We don’t have a catastrophic event to unite us, to cause us to rise to the occasion, and to bring out our nobler selves, and so we have to make up stories about people who do, and we make them look like us. We all want to be more than we are.

i think there is a certain aesthetic to the end of the world that is very popular right now, especially in video games. There is something beautiful and post-modern in all of that destruction and abandoned overgrowth. It’s a landscape that allows us to envision life on the ragged edge, where men find out what they are truly made of. It’s funny to me, though, that so often the reason behind our destruction is our own hubris, but what could be more arrogant than to believe that we will survive our own disasters?