The DNM

Was that It? The Zombie Apocalypse Jumps The Shark

If zombies attack the world, everyone willrun and hide. Except for us gamers of course. We've been waiting forthis all our lives. –TedsReal  on Twitter

As a meme, a joke, a shorthand for ironies, as a release valve, the apocalypse has become a darkly comic aspect of our culture. All this means is, we're acclimated, to a mutable normal, where the clocks and the predictions stop.

The Apocalypse: it may no longer be hip, but it does still exist, and it comes with its own symbols and myths, its very own language. Today, beyond irony is post-gallows humor and practicality. This is a time after the moorings on the boat have been cut and we are off to see what is on the other side. Those moorings loosened by countless ancestors, brings us to our present challenges. On the post-apocalypse boat, we are a team, whether or not we want to be.

Imagine we're on the boat, and everyone has ropes to pull.

Transforming this experience from one that is fatalistic and depressed into one that is responsive and positive is the art and trick of mutual survival. By choosing to address problems of population, resources, economics and by working against absurdities, failures, abuses, people have already begun the work of sailing this boat.

There are many good people on this boat.

We're now in the flow of the apocalyptic current. People are flowing away from impossible living conditions, and borders are slowly giving way. This is the age of the semi-migration, of the fluctuating space between refugee status and sovereign electronic being. There are good and bad parts to systems halts. By approaching apocalypse like a shut down and a reboot, we can imagine this process is standard to any upgrade.

Every rope we pull, is code.

Christians espouse the end of the world as a Judgment Day, so there is only one apocalypse in that scenario.Turning to an older system for some clarity, Hindus view apocalypse as part of the turning in a cosmic calendar. In this way, an apocalypse acts as a threshold between massive units of time. These units of time are yugas. The idea behind a yuga is that everything has its levels of development, and that includes not just humans orEarth, but the whole of the universe.

Yugas run for thousands of years and each one has a complicated system of math which I don't fully understand, however whether we're entering a brief golden age of a few millennia or a time of extended trial by fire, really has little relevance. We are not here to be fatalistic. The point is to understand that an apocalypse is an aspect of changing cycles, a threshold. It doesn't matter our religious beliefs, or whether we have any at all, since scientists also speak of these cyclical changes, if from different angles.

What matters is that we accept time and its work: Evolve. Rinse. Repeat.

The good news is an apocalypse doesn't necessarily mean an end of life on Earth. The bad news is an apocalypse means we have to engage with a new style of normal. We can and should expect to survive these great changes as a species, but not without effort. Mother Earth is an adventure space and the stakes are often paid in blood and sweat.

If we stopped every war tomorrow,disarmed every bomb and switched everyone to renewable energy, all in a day: we'd still have to contend with a bumpy ride ahead, until our biosphere stabilized. Undoubtedly, this seems overwhelming at first, but we have the tools, and we have a rising techno-culture,suited to exactly these challenges.

Understanding this apocalypse as a planetary function can help reconcile us to this depth of change. as being at some level normal, if not everyday. Apocalypse is part o fthe human game space. Wrestling this phenomenon away from the particulars of religious canons while retaining its essential truth of transformation, is key.

An apocalypse is a tool, a signal, a portal, just like any other word. The apocalypse is not unique to any particular tradition. It is a type of calendar event, that spans thousands and millions of years. The apocalypse in this way, can be seen as a frontier, a threshold, where the durability of each idea,perspective and practice is tested for fitness in a new age, for application within a new platform.