April 22: "The Last Myth"

Here's a Huffington Post feature by the authors of The Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking Tells Us About America. Which is also a really good book; I read it this last week.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mathew-gross/9-ways-the-world-might-en_1_b_1435648.html

The Last Myth claims that fears of the apocalypse have been on the rise in America, in large part as tools of worldview vindication. That is to say - a Christian may look toward the Rapture with the hope of being proved right about her religion; whereas an environmentalist might be accused of feeling a little frisson of vindication whenever another Rhode-Island worth of Antarctica calves into the sea.

I think the authors are pretty successful in saying that an impulse to believe in imminent disaster is deeply connected with feeling one's political or religious views are under threat. But by politicizing the apocalypse, they want to say, ugly scenarios which are actually evaluable by science - global warming, peak oil - get regarded merely as quasi-religious personality traits, and not a matter of evidence and fact. "You believe in climate change because you're a liberal" becomes a statement that can make sense in America, whereas, "You believe in gravity because you're a conservative" is not a combination of words anyone would even think of.