reworks chapter 2 argument

1 files changed, 39 insertions, 21 deletions

diff --git a/chapter2.md b/chapter2.md
index d760e62..a9be8a5 100644
--- a/chapter2.md
+++ b/chapter2.md
@@ -16,27 +16,45 @@ Since contemporary green rhetoric doesn't work, the rhetors think they need to
 increase the temperature, and drive towards increasingly dire warnings of
 impending catastrophe, thinking that people just need more of a shove. They call
 on the familiar symbolic language of nuclear winter. The interests of mass media
-also favours sensationalist language. This only leads feelings of powerlessness
-to degenerate into despair.
-
-This has led many people to think that the end-of-the-world sensationalism is
-the root cause of the problem. Some have even labelled this trope
-'apocalypticism' and thus blamed the apocalyptic imagination, accusing
-apocalypse as being life-denying, pessimistic, quietist, destructive, and
-hopeless.
-
-This follows a long tradition of authority distrust of apocalyptic imagination,
-and the Apocalypse of St John in particular. Authorities tend to see it as
-exhorting quietist expectation for a supernatural deliverance over taking
-effective action for change, or exhorting sadistic pleasure in witnessing
-vindictive violence, if not participating in such violence oneself. Meanwhile,
-those who have read apocalypse 'from below' tend to emphasise how it has a
-visionary interpretation of the tribulations of this world, and a visionary
-expectation of this world being transformed, and use this vision to motivate
-movements for transformational social change.
-
-In fact, apocalyptic language is perfectly capable of meeting the critics'
-concerns, and the Apocalypse of St John is an excellent demonstration of this.
+also favours this catastrophism. This only leads feelings of powerlessness to
+degenerate into despair.
+
+This has led many people to think that this catastrophism is the root cause of
+the problem. Some have even labelled this trope 'apocalypticism' and thus blamed
+the apocalyptic imagination, accusing apocalypse as being life-denying,
+pessimistic, quietist, destructive, and hopeless.
+
+In fact, the Apocalypse of St John is very different from catastrophism.
+
+For St John, there is no impending catastrophe that his audience can avert. The
+tribulations have already begun, and are largely in the hands of cosmic forces
+far bigger than his audience. The exhortation is not to avert the bad thing, but
+to endure it.
+
+St John uses mythological language to place the present tribulations of his
+community in a cosmic and eschatological context. This is how the call to endure
+can make sense to his audience. In contrast, mere catastrophism does not do
+this, and may even emphasise the meaninglessness of individual action.
+
+John's apocalyptic imagination uses mythological language to reveal the world of
+appearances for what it really is. The ideology of Empire is a pretender God,
+and the suffering of the martyrs is in fact God's way of conquering evil. John
+may have created a crisis for a people that didn't see one, a people that needed
+'waking up'. So, while catastrophism imagines that all humanity approaches the
+catastrophe more or less from the same perspective, and thus works to kill
+politics, John's apocalyptic imagination imagines precisely the opposite: he
+enlivens political criticism and active resistance to dominant structures by
+identifying how people relate unequally to them.
+
+So people today, when they equate apocalypticism with catastrophism, are cutting
+out most of the apocalyptic imagination and distorting its message. This is now
+new. This is a very traditional move which functions to shut down radical
+dissent against dominant structures.
+
+Meanwhile, those who have read the Apocalypse 'from below' tend to emphasise how
+it has a visionary interpretation of the tribulations of this world, and a
+visionary expectation of this world being transformed, and use this vision to
+motivate movements for transformational social change.
 
 The apocalyptic form is therefore not the reason that green rhetoric is failing.
 As explored in chapter 1, green rhetoric is failing because it is failing to