The DNM

The Apocalypse is Dead, Long Live the Apocalypse

"In the traditions of 'Western' science and politics--the tradition of racist, male-dominant capitalism; the tradition of progress; the tradition of the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture; the tradition of reproduction of the self from the reflections of the other - the relation between organism and machine has been a border war. " ― Donna Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto 

When we speak of an apocalypse we gravitate towards the melodramatic stories of both history and cinema. In the western tradition we envision a singular booming voice that comes according to familiar end of times storylines. In these versions it happens in a big and reliable fashion that stop us all in our tracks. We imagine an inconvenient moment or two, but console ourselves with an impending result of satisfaction, the final taking away of those noisy, déclassé neighbors into certain oblivion. We anticipate our sparkling outfits,our own passing of the judgment. We wait for a day with a big, booming voice that will announce both some start and some end. We pin our ideas of apocalypse to a tale of comeuppance where the hero is"me and you", and wrath descends on "them and they." Despite this cultural script, in today's apocalypse there is no "me"and there is no "they," there is only "we" and "us." The more we fail to see this, the more we will lose out on opportunities to help ourselves.

Our globalized society comes with a complex set of issues, highlighting the interdependence of all human groups. Clans, tribes, races, nations, no one is as isolated as they think, and none are a chosen people in any practical sense. Those old promises of being special and saved because of some accident of birth, those days are gone. Does a melting nuclear reactor or a warhead spewing its toxicity for untold miles truly avoid some people and not others? No, it does not. There are no ideological passovers, no hard borders or true containment when it comes to fallout, whether it be nuclear or some other type. Interdependence in both its literal and metaphorical examples antagonize the old promises of being more special than our neighbor. Our old ways, our agricultural era orthodoxies, rely on ideas of a perfect separateness of solid, if invisible lines that no longer apply to reality and how it is lived.

Everything from our homes to our gods are built upon a fetish of war and imbalance. We must face this head on, if we are to engage at an entirely new level of shared interest and commonality. How do we dismantle our war machine without dismantling society? How do we maintain continuity with tradition while applying radical revisions to our operating principles? I have no idea, nor am I required to have the exact idea,since there is no single solution or savior. I am required to act with my talents, to provide space for others to act with their best abilities, and in their own expanded self-interest.

Novelty is not a savior and corruption can infect the most altruistic of projects. Everyday stability is a group project. Elevation of the human condition is a group effort forged by individuals, all creating their own part of our world. Recognizing that is the sum of the small people, and their small acts that can generate a flood. Denial of the apocalypse is a natural reaction, easily distorted and dismissed.

Listen closely,what do you hear, in between?

I walk like the apocalypse in the countless steps of insects with an unquenchable hunger for electronics and wiring, making their way up a coastline.

I feel the apocalypse in the moody swings of daily temperatures.

I creep the apocalypse, like the flames of a wildfire.

I hear apocalypse in the the silencing of drought.

I spy the apocalypse on the beach as it redesigns, spy it in a child's hands full of shells, sea glass and sea plastic.

I venerate the apocalypse in honoring the litany of the extinct and the endangered; in the catalogue of losses both complete and pending.

I am amused by the apocalypse and its glut of celebrity.

I consume the apocalypse in headlines growing more surreal with brutality, and more sanitized through language, each and everyday.

I recognize the apocalypse in the suspicions leveled at our neighbors, and the snipes launched at our students.

I am covered in the apocalypse,walking through the bloodbaths of extremists; idolators of violence.

I rise with the apocalypse, every morning and go to bed with it each day, under surveillance.

I pass by the apocalypse as white-washed walls spring back to life, over and over again.

I leap with the apocalypse and its smiling emoji.

I connect with the apocalypse,when it hits me directly, sometimes in the stomach, forcing me fromthe stories I tell myself, directly into the moment.

Apocalypse is in the crevices:

Apocalypse is in the hands of a suburban girl dancing with LEDs, and in the hands of a young man clinging a SIM card as he travels the desert.

The apocalypse happened already:with a flood, earthquake, tornado, landslide, avalanche; blips on a radar, to everyone but locals.

The apocalypse is a churning of cogs grinding past their limits, to a point of chaos and breakdown.

The apocalypse is the ultimate recycling center, the home of cultural compost.

This is the place where the isms,cannibalize themselves, while we are required to persist, and transform.

The apocalypse is the ultimate dance party, the space of opportunity.

The apocalypse is made of people.

The apocalypse is fluid,functional, a metaphysical birth canal.

The apocalypse is a platform of rebirth, at a colossal scale, and as any developer knows, when you scale up, there are lots of little details.

An apocalypse is not a purely environmental event, nor is it solely social or even psychological. The apocalypse is a dynamic, a physics of forces. It's full of action, and pauses, plentiful in the many small moments where there is a "before" and a decided "after." During such an experience, persistent habits no longer yield the same results. That which functioned, the norms of yesteryears, become not only stale but toxic, and so finally, a shift appears. The apocalypse, like much in life, is an accumulation of percentages.

An apocalypse is something well beyond environment, politics and religion individually, since it is the crossing of a border that includes these and more. The apocalypse isa collapsing of the perceptive limits, the giving way of mental constructs that are no longer allied with us in the game of survival.Apocalypse is a comprehensive reshaping that shakes away old skin like a snake, a rebirth where no mask, no name, no brand is immune to its reach. Nobody controls the scope or shape of an apocalypse: since it is a function of time, and since we did not design time, but we can understand it, we must be willing to show this apocalypse, and ourselves, some respect.