first pass on cutting word count

1 files changed, 26 insertions, 34 deletions

diff --git a/chapter5.md b/chapter5.md
index e352acb..f9b48d3 100644
--- a/chapter5.md
+++ b/chapter5.md
@@ -20,41 +20,33 @@ catastrophic symbol in popular culture, leads Frances Flannery to suggest that
 green rhetors should avoid evoking apocalyptic associations.
 
 However, in chapter 3, I argued that the Apocalypse of St. John, the chief
-source of apocalyptic language in the West, was not originally conceived as
-catastrophic, and did not create the aforementioned negative reactions, but
-rather used apocalyptic language as an essential tool in the author's rhetorical
-strategy.
-
-In chapter 4, I went further, and argued that in order to succeed now, green
-rhetors must use similar apocalyptic rhetorical strategies. I did this through
-the case study of arguing for a Green New Deal, arguing that in order to
-convince UK citizens to take the political action necessary to bring a Green New
-Deal about, green rhetors need to use minority cognition, tribulation language,
-and utopian end-time speculation, in similar ways and for similar reasons as
-once applied to St. John.
+source of apocalyptic language in the West, had a very different catastrophic
+dialectic, and did not create the aforementioned negative reactions, but rather
+used apocalyptic language as an essential tool in the author's rhetorical
+strategy. In chapter 4, I went further, and argued that in order to succeed now,
+green rhetors must use similar apocalyptic rhetorical strategies.
 
 My analysis has severe limits. As I explored in chapter 1, there are many
 reasons why green rhetoric is too often failing at present, and there's no good
 cause to think that any one solution will fix all. Nor have I made any attempt
-to explain why catastrophic motifs are so consistently reproduced in green
-rhetoric, nor have I provided a feasible means of ensuring that green rhetors
-can and do adopt the apocalyptic strategies I have proposed. In chapter 1, I
-warned that a great deal of contemporary green rhetoric does not successfully
-identify a practical plan of action or the right audience to carry it out: I am
-happy to confess my guilt in the same sin. I have also not given nearly as much
-attention to people who hold millenialist worldviews as I would have liked, and
-they deserve.
-
-What I do claim, is that, in defiance of the many critics of apocalypticism, a
-better green rhetoric would be a more apocalyptic rhetoric, at least in the
-sense that it uses similar rhetorical strategies to those deployed by St. John
-of the Apocalypse.
-
-To put it another way, both St. John and contemporary green rhetors have the
-same rhetorical goal: to motivate an ethic of martyrdom. This puts similar
-constraints on the kinds of rhetorical strategies which will and won't work. To
-better achieve their goals, green rhetors will have to find minority
-epistemologies with which to fight fossil-think, steel their audiences for
-tribulations, and engage in utopian end-time speculation to convince their
-audiences that their potential sufferings are worth enduring. When they do so,
-they will find the path well-trodden by St. John.
+to explain why the catastrophic dialectic criticised in chapter 2 are so
+consistently reproduced in green rhetoric, nor have I provided a feasible means
+of ensuring that green rhetors can and do adopt the apocalyptic strategies I
+have proposed. In chapter 1, I warned that a great deal of contemporary green
+rhetoric does not successfully identify a practical plan of action or the right
+audience to carry it out: I am happy to confess my guilt in the same sin. I have
+also not given nearly as much attention to people who hold millenialist
+worldviews as I would have liked, and they deserve.
+
+What I do claim, is that, in defiance of the many critics of apocalypticism, and
+despite the fact that apocalypticism, like all good things, can and is twisted
+to evil ends, green rhetors must draw on John's apocalyptic rhetorical strategies.
+
+Since ancient times, apocalyptic imagination has been used to name and shame
+idolatrous economic and ideological systems which pretend to the divine status
+of eternal peace and prosperity, while in reality driving massive violence and
+destruction which can only end in either revolution or collective suicide. For
+all that, the apocalypticist is no cynic: John sees a realistic vision of
+social, indeed cosmic, transformation at the end of all things, which has
+motivated revolution and resistance for centuries. In the fight for a greener
+world, apocalyptic is as necessary as ever.