The long history and bright future of the end of the world

Prophets are always disappointed dear Nostradamus. That's why new ones are always in the wings updating the catastrophes

-Andre Codrescu-

I remember the late 1970's when the new-agers were petting their pieces of quartz and telling us in solemn reverential tones that Mother Shipton had predicted the end of the world in 1982; although some said 1981.

The world to an end shall come
In nineteen hundred and eighty one.

Such is the malleability and durability of prophecy. Although prophecies said to be from the Yorkshire prophetess born in about 1488 were published in 1641, eighty years after the reported end of her days, they really didn't predict the end of the world but rather a series of catastrophes in the vague idiom of soothsayers and fortune tellers throughout time. In fact it's questionable that she ever lived, much more questionable that she was Satan's daughter, glowed in the dark and was not the fabrication of 17the century writers. Her prediction of the death of Cardinal Wolsey, for instance, was published years after the man died.

In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black and in green….
Iron in the water shall float,
As easy as a wooden boat.

It wasn't until the mid 19th century in 1862 that Shipton's startling predictions of things like balloons and telegraphy and diving bells and England finally allowing Jews to live there appeared courtesy of Charles Hindley, who wrote it and publicly admitted of having done so. Of course he had predicted eighteen eighty one as the end time, but someone in the wings was happy to update it for the next century's crop of 20th century gulls.

Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.

Perhaps not so startling having been written in the age of steam transportation and the telegraph, of iron ships and submarine boats and hydrogen balloons, all of which existed already in Hindley's time. It's almost biblical in having predicting things ex post facto and passing off of current idiom as the dialect of the remote past. Any passing familiarity with late 15th century English should have set off alarms, I should think, but it's no surprise to find such ignorance amongst the hip and eager cognoscenti.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.

-Henry David Thoreau-

Few of the crystal gazers, if any, bothered to risk the delicious feeling of being in the know to the extent of finding out that it was a hoax. Indeed, even today one finds lengthy and utterly fictional web posts about stealing the prophecies of Mother Shipton from secret rooms at secret libraries where the scrolls had been hidden "by the government" so as not to panic the people. Delicious indeed and it seems to fill some human desire for arcana, for ancient wisdom and the cheap high it brings. There is always someone to fill that need whether it be political groups with dire warnings about NATO hiding H bombs under Philadelphia, Obama hiding death panels in his health care reform, Mayan prophecy or some equally ludicrous cataclysm from John of Patmos.

Certainly most things will in time have an end; perhaps time itself, but it's not so much the knowledge of the inevitable that intrigues us, enthralls us, but the idea that the processes of entropy, the chaotic randomness of the universe have something to do with our species and its thoughts and actions and the myths of our more ignorant ancestors. Secret, undetectable energies and entities with the secret hopes and fears are delectable and they distract us from the utterly uncaring, incomprehensible emptiness of existence. They create a universe in which we might mean something, might feel at least temporarily superior to the other lumps of fragile mortality around us and so in twenty one and eighty two, Old Mother Shipton will have predicted yet another end and perhaps the Mayans math will be updated or reinterpreted and mankind reprieved for a hundred years. Jesus' ETA will still be imminent, the hidden Imam about to be revealed and the last days yet at hand. We'll still wave pieces of quartz and utter powerful words and formulae from an invented past. We'll still have some ancient calendar and myth. We'll still follow, as we were meant to

One that would would fain seem wise and learnt, and is but a fool and an ignorant self-conceited gull.

-John Florio-

There will be no final day I hear
While prophets whimper in our ear
of signs and portents in the skies
and issue forth unending lies.

Into the crystal ball we'll gaze
the obvious shall seem a maze
But never mind and never fear
It won't all end until next year.

-Father Fogg-

McDictionary

Corporate Lawyers can be ferocious and McLawyers, like dogs with seven heads, surround you before you know what's bit you. So when the Oxford English Dictionary included McJob, defined as a boring, dead-end gig, the barking began. People tend to portray anything that's mass produced, nearly identical and mass marketed on the scale of "billions and billions" by putting Mc in front, like McMansions or McChurches, but sometimes the prefix refers to the sort of job that could almost be done by a machine if a machine would put up with something that boring and pointless.

But as I said, the McLawyers are as relentless as mosquitoes in a Minnesota summer. I once know a collector of McDonald's memorabilia who used the nickname The McNutt who got a cease and desist letter from them; not because he was making money from it - in fact he was promoting their products - but because he dared to Mc anything without their permission.

But anyway, since they can't sue the dictionary and there are too many people using McJob to take them all to court or to threaten them McDonald's is trying, in an Orwellian way, to stack the deck of language so that McJob will no longer be pejorative but filled with praise.

We can laugh and the Oxford linguists probably will too, unless enough money starts flowing, but the language really doesn't belong fully to us any more. So much of what we say and how we say it has been prescribed by special interest groups, lobbyists, University sociology departments and lawyers, that Orwell himself would giggle. We hardly see health clinics anymore, but "wellness centers" are everywhere. Real Estate Brokers wanted a higher sounding name, so they forced us to say "realtor" and we obey with hardly a snicker. Last week's paper announced the impending arrival of several new "lifestyle centers" which as best I can tell seem to be strip malls.

Most of us still realize that "pre-owned" means used and that a "mobile estate" is still a trailer, but all in all and just like everything else, our language is their language, bought and paid for and the function of their language is to sell and to manipulate.

It's all the same

It's silly to attach too much significance to the Miss Universe pageant, but that won't stop me. It's sad but predictable that the US contestant would be booed; it's what we get for putting Cheney and the Chimp in office and keeping them there and we all share the blame for that. But since this pageant is, like a dog show, all about maintaining breed standards, it does point out the increasing uniformity of the modern capitalist world and the dramatic reduction of choices globalization allows us.

Want a new car to cruise the boulevard? Which off-road vehicle would you like? Want something sporty for those mountain roads, something swanky to show up at the yacht club in, something smooth and stable for the interstate? Which off-road vehicle would you like?

Who is the most beautiful woman in the world? here are some identical products to choose from. Miss Korea, Miss Brazil - they're all the same as Miss Venezuela; same hair, same build, same features. Yes, they're all attractive, but no, they don't represent the women of the world in all their varieties.

Paris Bistros close to make way for another Starbucks clone, all cities have the same architecture, people in New Guinea and Finland watch American Idol and eat at McDonalds. Welcome to planet Stepford.

A dog's life

I once saw dog skins displayed for sale in a Xian market; a sad sight as much for my suspicions of the mistreatment of the animals as for the actual sight of their hides hanging in the smoggy wind. I've been infuriated at video of crated dogs being thrown violently onto oriental concrete floors from the back of trucks, man's best friends whimpering at the pain. I love dogs as much and maybe more than anyone, but because I'm a human and a bit of a hypocrite, I don't suffer as much when people hunt raccoons or weasels for their skins or bludgeon cattle for their hides.

There seems to be a distinction, although a hypocritical one perhaps, between raccoon fur and the fur of the Asiatic Raccoon dog, although both are quite intelligent and both share the "cuteness" factor which after all is the most important indicator of how we decide whether an animal is a friend or food. When the Humane Society finds that some fur being sold under designer labels as raccoon or rabbit is actually dog, we are offended. Some of what is labeled as fake fur, they say, turns out to be raccoon dog as well and there is a push to put the raccoon dog on a list of forbidden fur. I have no idea if that animal is endangered. I have no idea whether this is an animal you would want or could have as a pet. I have no idea whether it is more attractive or cuddly than a raccoon, but dog is the magic word that puts it in a different category from something you might set a trap for or would call an exterminator in a panic if you found one in your attic. Our hierarchy of sympathy for animals is not objective.

Don't get me wrong, I have strong feelings about humane treatment of animals. It's human to be humane after all and although animals have little inhibition about ripping other animals to pieces and eating them, there is hypocrisy in everything human. I know that pigs are intelligent animals, but I do like the bacon and bratwurst that comes from killing them. I feel terrible eating lamb and I won't eat rabbit unless I'm in danger of starvation ( which I'm not) because they're cute. I try not to eat mammals at all, in fact, and I have gone so far as to chase a wayward mouse, several lizards and any number of insects out the door rather than to kill them, but I draw my ethical lines in a different place than PETA or those who refuse all animal products for either moral or other reasons known only to Californians.

As I said, all that is human is hypocritical and those eating their organic vegetables fertilized by fish and bone meal, or manure from cattle fed on ground up parts of other cattle also have to explain why bugs and vermin and parasites are not worthy of their compassion, why the wildlife and habitat destroyed by their developments and their agriculture and their waste products doesn't outweigh their sentimental sympathy for raccoon dogs and why that leather upholstery in your BMW is more morally supportable than a hamburger. There really is no way to live the doctrine of Ahimsa, no way to survive without participating in the destruction of life and much of that life, from tapeworm to tiger, would be quite happy to consume you, given the chance. The lion that lays down with the lamb would die, as would the lambs in time, and miserably too, if there were nothing to keep their numbers down. Utopia would be a dead world.

That middle class American fantasy of a wind-powered, pollution free pure land : an escapist fantasy paradise full of organically grown, low energy, cruelty free, natural fiber where everything is artisanal or Tuscan or organic, or at least has a pretentious Euro-style name. Where everyone is very thin and very well dressed and very middle class and perpetually healthy and totally in tune with the latest wisdom about crystals and nutrition and fung sui and the pandas and baby seals and raccoon dogs frolic care free in the sun, is just that -- an escapist delusion; a tiny, temporary thing that could only exist as a bubble supported by the suffering and exploitation of others.

In the world of the immediate future; in a world of tens of billions struggling to eat, despoiling the land and sea and air in the process, there may no longer be any way to eliminate factory farms or animal suffering or to implement organic farming on anything but a tiny scale. Does it matter if we decrease our individual energy use by 20% while the population doubles? There may be no way to save most of the animals, there may be no way to save us or even to approach that fantasy of the simple, pure, pre-industrial but high tech, tastefully dressed in organic cotton life of sipping $6 organic soy milk Tuscan Lattes with artesanal Madagascar cinnamon sticks hand picked by joyful virgins in a tropical paradise. Life pushes the limits and the limit of our life is squalor, privation, disease and suffering as our numbers inevitably continue to grow.