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-bibliography: bibliography.bib
-title: Reading log
-author: Joe Carstairs
----
-
-## 2026-04-30
-
-### @{apocalyptic-complex}
-
-The essays largely cover the reception of ancient apocalyptic literature in a
-variety of contexts not obviously relevant to my dissertation: medieval
-Christendom, medieval Judaism, the German Enlightenment, post-communist Ukraine,
-Philip Pullman's novels, contemporary Jihadism.
-
-From the introduction, I learned that Obama had been identified as the
-Antichrist during the 2008 Presidential election campaign by a Republican party
-TV advert, Tim LeHaye and Hal Lindsey among others.
-
-I also found this argument interesting: despite the existence of many other
-ancient apocalypses, the Apocalypse of St John is ground zero for the genre now,
-because, due to its place in the Christian canon, it has had far more influence
-than any other apocalypse, ancient or modern.
-
-### @{cry-of-the-wild}
-
-There were three epigraphs, one a 2016 report from the World Economic Forum
-estimating that ocean plastic would outweigh fish by 2050, alongside the second,
-quoting Rom 8:19,22 in both Greek and NRSV, which features the word 'apocalypse'
-and apocalyptic imagination, the creation groaning in expectation.
-
-The introduction had interesting reflections on the role of imagination in green
-issues. 'I don't believe in climate change.' It's too big to imagine, I'm numbed
-to catastrophic news and forecasts. 'Yes, it's very bad. Yes, we're all going to
-die. Pass the salt, please. How's your homework going, Rachel?' He says: 'This
-exhaustion of our intellect, our compassion and our capacity for alarm is
-desperately dangerous. Only imagination can reignite them. And only story [...]
-can do the necessary imaginative job. We're dying for want of a story.' This
-book presents 'new-old stories of the natural world from the perspective of the
-besieged.'
-
-So Foster's goal is to restore his readers' capacity to be alarmed, presumably
-by descriptions of present or future catastrophes. He thinks that many of his
-readers are no longer (implicitly: once were) capable of being alarmed by such
-news and forecasts.
-
-I focused on the story of Eeschin the orca. A few observations:
-
-First, the story describes a kind of apocalypse. It is the end of Eeschin's
-world, the end of her clan, the death of her people. It uses apocalyptic
-symbols, particularly plague and judgement. It is in the secular apocalyptic
-tradition in which there is no world-transformation at the end, but the
-catastrophe is final, there is no future after the catastrophe.
-
-Secondly, Eeschin can endure the end of her world and 'did not panic', because
-she has stories that enable her to make meaning out of her loss ('This could not
-have been borne unless it was turned into an epic'), and because she has a
-non-dominating, engaged relationship with the world ('She lived in a world that
-really existed'). It's possible that the apocalyptic end of her world revealed
-what it was that she really needed: her stories and her relationship with the
-world.
-
-It was very moving and made me damp at the eyes. It serves as an example of how
-someone might face an apocalypse with resilience. However, it is different than
-the rhetorical strategy of typical apocalypses, because the apocalypse is not
-one the reader is facing or may face, even imaginatively: it is someone else's
-apocalypse.
-
-### @{forget-me-not}
-
-The climate crisis has already arrived, and it may soon be 'too late to turn
-back', we have only 11 years (from 2019, quo IPCC) to avoid catastrophe. But
-government action, COPs, IPCC, is all hot air. (Interesting mixture of
-catastrophe-then and catastrophe-now models.)
-
-Pavelle doesn't want you to panic. Panicked people make poor decisions. She
-wants you to go outside and fall in love with nature.
-
-The bees are disappearing, but you can help by planting flowers in a window box.
-
-Epilogue: I could write a utopia or a dystopia, but I don't want to, because
-both futures are possible. It's up to us to decide which we get. We need to make
-tough calls, lean on science, and have faith in ourselves.
-
-I like the move to restore relationships with nature, but I dislike the idea
-that 'we' (that mysterious 'we' again) get to decide. I as an individual can't
-decide whether we get a utopia or a dystopia, that's up to much bigger systems
-than I can control, there's a hidden appeal to big global institutions to save
-us, and an idea that you and I are somehow responsible for what those
-institutions do. Lean on science, I'm not sure how I feel about that narrative.
-
-It is an interesting book demonstrating that multiple rhetorical agendas can be
-overlaid in the same text. Should I restore my personal relationship with nature
-as the catastrophe unfolds, or should I work to avert the catastrophe? Should I
-take local action myself, or try to steer institutional action? Should I have
-faith in my own powers, or learn to accept and live well with my powerlessness?
-
-### @{rewild-yourself}
-
-There was a theme of magic throughout. 'Magic trousers' are waterproof trousers,
-they enable you to be out in bad weather. Going to the Cornish coast, the realm
-of the gannets, is like going through the back of the wardrobe, crossing worlds.
-
-The magic theme was very shallow. What it was was 23 practical tips for getting
-outside and getting in touch with nature. There was a thin layer of magic/spell
-language pasted on the top.
-
-The book demonstrates the idea that what we need to do is restore our
-relationship with the natural world. However, it reinscribes the human/nature
-distinction by imagining nature as another world you need to step through the
-back of the wardrobe in order to get to.
-
-### @{back-to-nature}
-
-The stated goal of this book was to get you to take some individual action,
-giving examples including taking the bus, eating less meat or joining a protest.
-It used a hodgepodge of different rhetorical strategies, many of which I utterly
-despised, though some were better. There were some interesting examples of these
-strategies:
-
-- Threatening impending apocalyptic catastrophe to support government action
-- Individual action is the ultimate cause, so individual change of behaviour is
-  the only solution
-- We are complicit: don't be complicit! Don't tolerate apocalyptic evil!
-- What we need to do is respond rationally to the scientific facts, the problem
-  is we don't behave rationally enough or don't listen to the scientific facts
-- Community projects are better than top-down approaches, and they begin by
-  putting up gates to keep out the bad people, ie the homeless and those
-  suffering from drug addiction
-- Apocalyptic language can wake us up from our complacent stupor
-
-In fact, I already hated it by the time they'd stated the problem. The mystery
-for the authors is to explain 'our human reluctance to change our mindsets and
-behaviours', and in particular, why the scientific facts are not enough to do
-that, but in contrast tend to arouse offence, in their view, the most important
-obstacle to conservation. The answer, according to them, rests in the fact that
-political thought is associated with the prefrontal cortex, which happens to
-also be associated with personal expression; as well as the psychological theory
-of optimism bias and brain scans revealing that human beings struggle to take
-action in respond to gradual threats. They assert that in order for human beings
-to do anything, they need to be trained in a Skinner box to do that thing: this
-is a sad scientific fact.
-
-This to me was utterly bizarre and made me angry. Not only did they assume that
-the best way of explaining human behaviour is by scanning their brains or
-turning to psychological rules of thumb, ignoring cultural or rational
-explanations altogether and reducing human beings to dumb machines, they also
-assumed that the key problem for conservation is individual behaviours, ignoring
-culture, politics, and economics. Ugh!
-
-This emphasis on individual action, and ignorance of systemic issues, ran
-through the book. Plastic pollution is caused by me and you littering, and the
-right responses are beach cleans, 3 Rs, ethical consumption, and signing a
-petition. 'Hope is the driver that underpins all these actions [...] Remember,
-you're in the driving seat and the corporations and big companies are your
-wheels. If you turn right, they will turn right too. Eventually.' The book
-concludes with an assertion that 'we can make a difference'.
-
-The better side of this came out in a later chapter, when the authors played the
-judge, and declared various groups guilty: politicians, the mass media, the
-industry leaders. But then they turned to us: we are also guilty, because we
-prefer to go along with it rather than risk conflict. The author reflected on
-how they regularly fed treats with palm oil to their dogs, contrasted the joy of
-their dogs with the destruction of the rainforests, and decided that this could
-no longer be tolerated.
-
-This passage got me thinking: what does resisting the temptation of the Beast
-look like today, with a green focus? The rhetorical line here seems really quite
-like John's.
-
-There was an apocalyptic narrative of a community project in Holyland, Belfast,
-which was diabolical in a way I haven't encountered much yet. It was a
-transformation story, and the transformation started by -- this is a genuine
-quote -- when the community 'put up some gates to keep out the reprobates'. Holy
-smokes! That's not the kind of green apocalypse we want.
-
-There was also an apocalyptic narrative around the Climate and Ecological
-Emergency Bill, encouraging people to write to their MP or join a protest in
-support of the Bill. According to the Climate Change Committee, net zero by 2050
-only gives a "'greater than fifty per cent' [...] chance of avoiding climate
-catastrophe". The Committee recommended preparing for 2-4C of warming, 'for
-which read ... Armageddon. [...] the end of life as we know it.' A good
-illustration of how apocalyptic symbols and forms can be used to try and
-motivate political action, and in particular action to avoid an impending
-future catastrophe.
-
-As examples of action, the authors raised: gardening, ethical consumption, art.
-But they ultimately placed a higher value on political activism. Their models
-are Greta Thunberg, Ghandi, MLK and (curiously) Spartacus. We know that Greta
-Thunberg is a good model because thousands of people joined her movement around
-the worldand she got lots of praise and even money. We should be like Greta and
-take action, whatever action we can.
-
-To me, this emphasis on hero-activists is alienating and makes me want to stay
-at home, because I don't believe that I will be the one-in-a-million who will
-start a massive movement, and therefore don't believe that I can make any
-significant difference. The emphasis is on making a difference: implicitly,
-then, if you can't make a difference (almost all of us) you might as well stay
-at home.
-
-There was a decent bit on p290 arguing that we have come to increasingly accept
-the catastrophe, the numbers have lost their meanings, we forget that they are a
-death toll. 'We must wake up from our complacent stupor, because as every one of
-us knows, we are presiding over a very real ecological apocalypse and conducting
-a mass extermination in our own backyard, literally my backyard and yours. [...]
-But, critically, it is not too late; there is hope and a lot more besides. [...]
-We can make a difference. [...] We don't all have to agree about all the
-details, but we must agree on our shared agenda.' I liked the idea that we need
-to 'wake up from our complacent stupor' and the role of apocalyptic language to
-achieve that, but disliked that idea that 'we' (whoever that is) are in control.
-
-### @{green-utopias}
-
-Garforth pointed out that climate apocalypses are out there and having both
-revolutionary and conservative effects. We cannot change this just by wishing it
-to be so. The question that remains for us is, what do we use climate apocalypse
-to do, if we use it at all? Her suggestion is to use it to criticise
-conservative discourses.
-
-I found her description of conservative discourses helpful, and found her idea
-interesting that apocalypses can be used to criticise these discourses. I didn't
-understand the idea that conservative approaches 'de-politicise' things, but I'm
-curious. She provided lots of useful references for the subject of conservative
-environmental discourses and criticisms of climate apocalyptic. @{future-ethics}
-also came up a lot for chapters in favour of climate apocalypse.
-
-Garforth discussed 'adaptation and mitigation', 'limits' and 'sustainability'
-discourses, as well as 'environmental modernization theory.' In her view, these
-discourses frame the environmental problem as a market failure, an externality
-that needs to be internalised, achieved by incremental economistic improvements
-within existing power frameworks, particularly nation-states and the UN. High
-water marks of this movement include Kyoto, Bali 2007, the EU ETS, and the fad
-for carbon calculators.
-
-Good folk to read on this are: @{why-we-disagree}, @{new-tech-env-innovation},
-@{ecological-modernisation}, @{ecological-modernization-theory},
-@{politics-climate-change}, @{hulme-2008}.
-
-Naess, the founder of 'deep ecology', criticised limits discourse for being
-anthropocentric, and favoured an ecocentric view.
-
-Garforth criticised these discourses -- carbon calculators in particular -- for
-limiting green desire to individual market choices, a better self and a better
-lifestyle but not a better society, not a better idea of what it means for human
-beings to be well. @{seeds-dystopia} argued that these discourses are bad
-because they seek to manage unsustainability, depoliticise, dissolve radicalism,
-they are post-politics, rule out new ideas about how humans can be free and
-well.
-
-Garforth argued that apocalypse can fight back against post-politics,
-re-politicise the issues, bring back the prospect of a different future which
-post-politics closes off. Apocalypse can also give gravity, urgency to the
-issues, which the modernization discourses don't. She argued that the best
-apocalypses for this purpose are 'immanent', a constantly unfolding crisis,
-rather than apocalypses with an 'end', since their role is to get us to live
-well and make ethical decisions during the currently ongoing environmental
-crisis. See also @{future-ethics}.
-
-She pointed out that climate change is a wicked problem, and it is not possible
-to simply recognise it, respond to it, and resolve it. It requires many messy
-responses. See @{why-we-disagree}. I think this is a good corrective to
-Thunberg's rhetoric, implying that our problems would be solved if only the
-politicians recognised the gravity of the threat, listened to the scientists,
-and behaved like grown-ups.
-
-She raised some criticisms of climate apocalypse: it causes apathy, anxiety
-without agency, mere entertainment, or scares folk into authoritarian solutions.
-For more on this, see @{anthropocene-fictions}, @{future-ethics},
-@{fear-wont-do-it}, @{warm-words}, @{sustaining-unsustainable},
-@{swyngedouw-2010}.
-
-## 2026-04-29
-
-### @{american-apocalyptic}
-
-The big idea in this book is that apocalyptic is an American civic religion that
-cuts across the usual religious identity-markers. She was particularly
-interested in how American apocalyptic feeds prepper culture.
-
-I like that she showed how climate apocalypse narratives are not self-contained
-but draw on much wider symbolic resources. Americans are already living in an
-apocalyptic culture. For my dissertation, this means I can't recommend a kind of
-apocalyptic literature as if I get to control how it is received. Prepper
-culture was also an interesting excursion into one way that green apocalypses
-can make things happen. I thought her distinctions between big-A Apocalypse and
-small-a apocalypses and between religious and secular apocalypse were helpful.
-
-Some interesting observations from the Introduction:
-
-- Apocalypse can be understood as The End Of The World As We Know It --
-  TEOTWAWKI is a common acronym in prepper circles
-- Small-a apocalypses happen frequently: Noah, Trail of Tears, Hiroshima,
-  Nagasaki, WW2
-- Secular apocalyptic developed in the twentieth century, particularly after
-  1950ish. Traditional religious apocalyptic gives meaning to the events and
-  contains supernatural events and cosmic transformation, but in contrast,
-  secular apocalyptic tends to present cataclysms as meaningless, secular, and
-  without redemption. However, they may imply that when the old world is swept
-  away, it may make room for a new one.
-
-Some interesting observations from Chp7, 'Climate apocalypse':
-
-- Capital-A Apocalypses vs small-a apocalypses
-- 'Anthropocene' discourse is a secular eschatology
-- Delf Rothe has three models of Anthropocene discourse: catastrophism (disaster
-  movies), modernism (technological progress), realism (quietism?)
-- Problems with realism: it presumes that ecological harms are natural and/or
-  inevitable, thus frees oppressors from accountability
-- Narratives of impending catastrophe don't inspire action: see Chp 3 on the
-  mass media
-- McNeish 2017: moralising apocalypses to get you to recycle are self-defeating
-- Ertelt 2018: climate apocalypse is borne out of nuclear winter discourse, thus
-  inherits its fatalism, and continues to function as a secular religion
-- Preppers have an ethic of care, 'eco-piety'
-- Preppers also have an ethic of self-preservation and a 'lifeboat narrative'
-
-## 2026-04-28
-
-### @{apocalyptic-dimensions}
-
-Oegema claimed that the way to make apocalyptic literature relevant is to strip
-it of mythology and translate its core message (or the good bits of it, anyway)
-into secular, scientific, technological language. New heaven and new earth are
-to be swapped out for technological progress. This seems to me all wrong.
-Firstly, I think stripping apocalyptic of mythological language robs it of its
-most powerful rhetorical instrument and probably kills it. Secondly, scientific
-technological language cannot fill the hole left by mythological language,
-because it has no power to nest the reader into larger imaginative context, and
-probably other things, but I'm struggling to form the ideas. Thirdly, placing
-hope in technological progress is exactly the wrong way to respond to climate
-change, as that reinforces the same progress ideology that created the climate
-crisis: we need to demolish the ideology, not reinscribe it.
-
-Alber & Takvorian critique Roland Emmerich's _The Day After Tomorrow_. They say
-that hope in this film comes from a white male heterosexual middle-class
-saviour, whereas in reality the old order is the problem. The film is bad
-because it is reactionary instead of revolutionary. I agree that this film gives
-the wrong kind of hope, but I disagree with the diagnosis and am sceptical about
-the prescribed treatment. What's wrong with the narrative is that we are saved
-by the very systems which make environmental disaster possible, which escape
-they judgement they deserve and we all need (see above). White male heterosexual
-middle-class seems to me the wrong focus, the right focus is what the white male
-heterosexual middle-class people do because of the political-economic systems
-and ideologies they inhabit.
-
-Caracciolo argued that climate apocalypse should be avoided because (a) the harm
-is caused by humans and is in their power to prevent (b) the harm has already
-begun and is not reserved for a future cataclysmic event (c) climate change is
-not the end of the world. I think these are all very good points, and
-successfully identifies what is wrong with a lot of climate apocalypse right
-now. Notably, John's Apocalypse deals well with (b) and (c). With respect to
-(a), I might point out that it is not in the gift of almost anyone, and perhaps
-anyone at all, to control climate change, and therefore rhetoric which falsely
-claims the reverse may be dishonest and/or alienating.
-
-### @{regeneration}
-
-I like this book a great deal, but I don't think it is relevant.
-
-The Introduction and Epilogue were almost relevant. Painter described
-conservation as a rearguard action, 'ugly', 'underfunded', 'political',
-controversial, 'crisis management', caring for nature when the best options are
-unavailable, triage, 'least-bad choices', and said that many conservationists
-believe 'the natural world is doomed' and described conservation as 'fighting a
-rising tide'. However, the example of Mar Lodge Estate shows that humans and
-nature are more adaptable and resilient than you might expect. We can see the
-results of conservation, it is working.
-
-Terror is motivating ambition, he said in his Epilogue.
-
-In his Epilogue, he went on to speculate about the future of lynx introductions
-and what Mar Lodge Estate might become over the span of the Estate's 200-year
-plan.
-
-However, apart from light sprinklings of doom and gloom here and there, there
-was very little that was apocalyptic about this book. It is very realistic and
-historical-scientific rather than mythological or visionary. It strongly resists
-moral dualism, going out of its way to blur moral binaries, and is more
-interested in messy human lives, practical action and Realpolitik than pure
-morality.
-
-### @{revealed-wisdom}
-
-A collection of nice but mostly irrelevant academic essays on apocalyptic. It
-might be worth checking out Christopher Rowland's book output: he was evidently
-influential.
-
-Andrew Chester brought out the cosmic extent of threat in Revelation which I
-hadn't fully appreciated. He observed that the visions in Revelation unwind
-Creation, ending the separation between the heavens, plucking the stars from
-their place, darkening the sun and moon, destroying the land, threatening a
-complete end to creation. But Jesus shines like the sun and holds seven stars in
-his hand, and in the New Jerusalem, God's permanent light abolishes the light of
-the heavenly bodies. The old world was made chaos by evil, and the new world is
-re-created out of the chaos made of the old. He raised a difficult concern: does
-John's New Jerusalem ending appear like a _deus ex machina_? I wasn't convinced
-by his own solution. This issue bedevils green rhetoric as well: placing hope in
-a distant, improbable salvation over which we have little or no control, taking
-away the urgency for action now and making us feel alienated from the world.
-
-John Barton said that apocalypse encourages the ethics of setting-apart over the
-ethics of fitting in (he used jargon words which I forgot). Apocalyptic ethics
-is distinct from other Jewish ethics because it has a pessimistic view of human
-power and human prospects, but promotes disinterested submission to God anyway.
-I think this is similar to what I've seen described before as 'martyrdom
-ethics.'
-
-## 2026-04-27
-
-### @{oxford-handbook-apocalyptic}
-
-I finished skimming the chapters today after starting last Friday.
-
-DiTommaso said there were three periods of modern apocalyptic fiction. Before
-1945, there was a small number of novels and short stories about the decline of
-civilization, including HG Wells, Isaac Asimov, and others. From 1945-1990s,
-apocalyptic was dominated by the symbol of nuclear holocaust. From the 1990s,
-apocalyptic has focused on other doomsday scenarios, and responds to the fall of
-the Soviet Union, the War on Terror, the environmental crisis, and the new
-medium of the Internet. Since 1945, apocalypse in fiction has been equated with
-doomsday, and is therefore not really apocalyptic in DiTommaso's view.
-
-I did have an idea today that environmental apocalypse today is hamstrung by the
-hidden symbol of nuclear armageddon structuring the shape of the narrative.
-Maybe there's something in this, and maybe I should read some nuclear
-apocalypses, or nuclear political rhetoric?
-
-Frykholm had an interesting discussion of American premillenial
-dispensationalism. 'Premillenial' means Jesus comes back to inaugurate the
-millenium, not to conclude it. Unlike the jeremiads of the Puritans,
-contemporary dispensationalism relegates the realm of human action to merely
-individual salvation, everything else is doomed. There is little emphasis on an
-ultimate state of peace, and lots of emphasis on doom and destruction. It became
-popular just as evangelicals became increasingly politically influential, and as
-it did so, turned ever more to active symbols like believers fighting
-Antichrist. It has been spread by mass media and sells very well. It has
-motivated missionary movements, since in the dispensationalist scheme, Jesus
-will return only after the Gospel has been preached over the whole Earth. It is
-a very resilient tradition, and is unaffected by series of failed prophecies. It
-seems to function well as a way to give meaning to world events.
-
-### @{greenpeace-report}
-
-The Greenpeace report went like this: the scientists report their knowledge that
-human emissions will cause catastrophic global warming. If we don't change
-course, disaster will befall us, perhaps the collapse of civilisation. But 'we'
-can change course if governments reach international agreements to set and stick
-to targets, among other measures. This is the only sensible possibility in the
-current situation of crisis.
-
-I noticed a few echoes of nuclear rhetoric. Nuclear energy got a chapter,
-condemning nuclear energy as a failed 20th-century project not fit for the
-future. On page 1, the editor said, 'Even nuclear-weapons laboratories host
-conferences on the greenhouse effect these days.' Toronto 1990 declared the
-greenhouse threat to be 'second only to nuclear war.' Queen Beatrix was quoted
-saying in her 1988 Christmas address that 'The Earth is slowly dying, and the
-inconceivable -- the end of life itself -- is actually becoming conceivable. We
-human beings ourselves have become a threat to our planet.' The
-end-of-civilization rhetoric in several places also echoed nuclear rhetoric.
-
-I noticed that much of the exhortation was directed at nebulous 'we's and
-'countries'. 'Of course, developed countries should pay for it.' Sometimes, this
-stopped at scathing criticism of current practices, particularly the (excellent)
-chapter on economics attacking the policies of the IMF and World Bank.
-Sometimes, this came with concrete proposals for action, like the governments of
-OECD countries giving free stuff to countries in the Global South to not chop
-down rainforests or build renewable economies.
-
-Policy proposals included governments implementing (unspecified) policies to
-encourage alternatives to driving, banning highly emitting cars, governments in
-developed countries funding rainforest reforestation in developing countries,
-and other kinds of financial aid to developing countries funded by governments
-in developing countries.
-
-The Greenpeace response gave 7 proposals:
-
-1. Take action now, don't wait until there is more scientific certainty.
-2. 'The main routes to surviving the greenhouse threat' are energy efficiency,
-   renewables instead of fossil fuels and nuclear, ban the production of CFCs, produce less greenhouse gases in the process of making food, stopping deforestation, and scaling up reforestation.
-3. 'The world community' must consume no more than 12TW, distributed more
-   equally across the world than the current 10TW.
-4. 'Industrialized countries' should invest in energy efficiency and give free
-   stuff to developing countries to enable them to 'leap-frog' the polluting
-   route to industrialisation.
-5. All energy should be produced by renewables ASAP.
-6. Nuclear power should not be expanded or extended.
-7. The first steps are to immediately cut CO2 emissions, draw up a strategy for
-   phasing out fossil fuels in the early 21st century, make every effort to
-   arrest deforestation and halt the production of CFCs and HFCs.
-8. Climate action should be funded by cutting military expenditure.
-
-The report featured lots of scientific language throughout: figures, numbers,
-and references to scientific publications.
-
-I found the report alienating. I don't think it successfully identified the
-causes of global warming or the solutions. I don't think it generated hope or
-appropriate action.
-
-### @{apocalyptic-imagination}
-
-Reviews suggest that this book was been very influential since it was first
-published in 1984.
-
-Big takeaways:
-
-- John's Revelation innovatively identified Jesus with stock symbols from
-  apocalyptic and messianic traditions, and the symbols fought back...
-- Apocalyptic literature served diverse functions in diverse settings, John not
-  written in response to crisis but rather ideological conflict
-- Apocalyptic literature should be appreciated for multivocal, indeterminate use
-  of traditional mythological symbols
-- Apocalyptic literature generally serves to exhort and/or console by use of an
-  eschatological revelation mediated by an otherworldly being
-
-Apocalyptic literature may not all have a shared Sitz im Leben: coventicle and
-distress have been proposed, but the evidence is shaky. The notion that
-apocalyptic is written in response to crisis is shaky, too. Apocalypses have
-diverse goals in response to diverse problems. What they have in common is they
-respond to their diverse problems with a vision of another world, featuring
-judgement and eschatology. It's generally true that apocalyptic served to exhort
-and console, though this is very vague.
-
-John's Revelation was probably written to address an ideological conflict with
-Rome rather than a crisis of persecution.
-
-John's Revelation draws on apocalyptic precedents for these features:
-
-- Exhortation to martyrdom ethic (Dan)
-- Discourages militant action while envisioning final judgement (4 Ezra)
-- Affirms eschatological destruction of the wicked (4 Ezra)
-
-But what's weird is Jesus. Jesus accepts worship. Dan's Ancient of Days and Son
-of Man fused together in chp 1. Lion = lamb: fusion of messianic and sacrificial
-imagery. Reinterpretation of messianic tradition in light of Jesus' death.
-'Sword of his mouth' identifies Jesus who bore no sword with this standard
-messianic image, from Isa 11.
-
-In conclusion, John bends the apocalyptic genre to present Jesus as the Messiah.
-Meanwhile, the apocalyptic form bends John to present Jesus as a warrior and
-judge, in opposition to Jesus' irenic ethics. Hence the moral controversy over
-Revelation.
-
-This reading really helped me with the violence in Revelation. Perhaps part of
-the function of the violence in Revelation is to subversively identify Jesus
-with ancient Jewish hopes. Though am I being tempted to wash over the violence
-in the text?
-
-Collins also had a great discussion of dispensationalism vs ancient apocalyptic.
-He pointed out that dispensationalism swaps angst and martyr ethics for smug
-certainty of election, and swaps allusive mythological symbols for allegorical
-code. However, he admits that they share moral dualism, a sense of cosmic
-crisis, hope for divine intervention, and even 'decoding' has a long history.
-This motivates the view, which many scholars take, that apocalyptic is
-irredeemable.
-
-Lorenzo DiTommaso says it is an 'unhealthy worldview', immature, 'hostile to
-life on Earth.' I'd like to hear more about his views. David Frankfurter says it
-is a morally unacceptable apology for brutal violence.
-
-Collins thinks it is better to acknowledge both the violence and the justice/hope sides of the texts rather than try to deny the violence or ignore the justice/hope. He points out that apocalyptic symbols are not just used by dispensationalists, but also by novelists like Cormack McCarthy.
-
-Then there's some random handy observations on apocalyptic literature I picked
-up.
-
-He said that apocalyptic literature, apocalyptic social movements and
-ideologies, and apocalyptic eschatology, should all be distinguished, and never
-smudged together with a generic noun, 'apocalyptic'.
-
-He shed light on why scholars occasionally dispute the boundaries or existence
-of the genre, apocalypse. The word 'apocalypse' was first used to denote a genre
-from the late 1st century, after most of the core of the supposed genre was
-written. Semeia 14 set out to test whether 'apocalypse' was a real genre before
-that, and concluded, yes, the usual works do share features which distinguish it
-from other literature. Particularly revelation, mediated by an otherworldly
-authority, disclosing a transcendent reality, of eschatological salvation and/or
-another world. Other scholarly definitions are available.
-
-Collins noted two major types of apocalypse: historical vs cosmic journeys. Both
-interwoven in the Enochic literature. Striking lack of historical concern in
-Revelation.
-
-Collins notes that RH Charles in the age of Wellhausen, and HH Rowley and RS Russell in the mid-20C, set the tone before. They had a tendency to reduce mythological language to allegory for historical or theological propositional assertions, and were intolerant of what they saw as incoherence, and posited source relationships to 'explain' such features, as if they were necessarily written by neat-minded modern scholars like them. Nowadays, scholars believe that apocalypses were probably written like that originally, because their authors had different standards/priorities. Paul Ricoeur reckoned that symbols have multivocal, indeterminate meaning. Gunkel debunked textual 'seams' in apocalypses, encouraged appreciation of symbolic, traditional mythological language.
-
-Scholars spent much of the 20th century arguing over whether apocalypse came
-from prophecy or Persia, or even wisdom. Now scholars recognise it was
-influenced by all of those, and Hellenistic literature, but none of them can
-fully explain apocalypse independently. (The project to show where apocalypse
-came from often obscured hidden agendas to discredit apocalypse.)
-
-Apocalypse has suffered from scholarly prejudice, a morally inferior kind of
-literature, a corruption of late prophecy, distrust of millenarian movements.
-
-## 2026-04-24
-
-### @{oxford-handbook-apocalyptic}
-
-A useful reference, worth coming back to if I want to investigate particular
-topics in recent-ish biblical scholarship on apocalyptic.
-
-Friesen gave a helpful overview of recent Revelation scholarship. Between 1970
-and 1990, biblical scholarships came to agree that Revelation was written in the
-later part of Domitian's reign; that it was primarily written to address
-internal conflict, not external persecution; and that John replicates imperial
-ideology in some way, although scholars disagreed whether he replicates in order
-to reinscribe (Carey, Moore, Pipin) or to subvert (Fiorenza, Thompson, et alia).
-Revelation was increasingly interpreted through the concept 'empire' from 1990.
-Esler argued that recent Revelation scholarship has suffered from a myopic focus
-on empire, which has obscured many apocalypses' real concerns, which are often
-ethnic, in his view.
-
-Esler argued that John's rhetoric around magic functions to strengthen the
-distinct community identity of his audience, building on Elliot 1984, who argued
-that he responded to contemporary fears of _pharmakeia_ by accusing Rome of
-sorcery and showing that God had the best magic.
-
-Carey observed that John, like other apocalypticists, uses the form (direct divine revelation) to generate authority, but like other apocalypticists, he also generates authority by admitting his personal weakness and identifying with his audience.
-
-Carey also observed that the Lion of Judah is announced, then appears as a Lamb,
-implying that the Lamb conquers not by devouring his enemies but by his
-suffering witness.
-
-### @{goldstein-2024}
-
-Goldstein argues that right-wing people have labelled the climate movement
-'apocalyptic' in order to try and discredit it. He says it is ironic that the
-right wingers are accusing the climate movement of being religious when it is
-them that are denying the science. He concludes that climate science (which he
-conflates with the climate movement, because the climate movement is based on
-climate science) does have some aspects of biblical apocalypticism, but not
-others, and it should therefore be happy to adopt a 'secularised' notion of
-apocalypse.
-
-The features climate science shares with biblical apocalyptic are revealing the
-future, catastrophe and moral dualism. This is fine and should not change: these
-are simply the scientific facts. The differences are as follows: there is
-nothing 'otherworldly' or 'metaphysical' about climate science, there is no hope
-placed in a messianic saviour but rather in collective action, and there is no
-guarantee of a redemptive afterwards or of judgement or of salvation.
-
-I found his argument very weak and distressingly myopic. His account of the
-similarities and differences between 'climate science' and apocalyptic neatly
-summarised, I think, just the kind of climate apocalyptic that is justly
-criticised for a variety of reasons, and fails to recognise the need for climate
-communication, even that which is 'scientific', to be fictionalised, and the
-need -- as many people see it -- for an ultimate hope.
-
-### @{fagan-2017}
-
-Horribly unreadable, in the way I associate with 'critical theory.' A couple of
-points stuck out to me. She was talking about ecological apocalypse combined
-with ethical motivation, like 'future generations will never forgive us if we
-don't act now!'. She criticised this, apparently mainly because of the 'we'. The
-'we' ignores the fact that individuals share responsibility for climate change
-with corporations and the capitalist system. Also, putting the adverse effects
-of climate change in the future ignores the adverse effects that are already
-happening.
-
-### @{kowalewski-environmental-apocalypse}
-
-A collection of essays, four were particularly interesting. There was a strong
-thread of avoiding utopianism on the one hand, and catastrophism on the other.
-I think John's Apocalypse can fit nicely in the middle ground.
-
-Catastrophe/Anthropocene discourse, whatever seeks to say 'we have all done this
-and we must change our ways now or else,' reinforces existing institutions
-instead of seeking to reform them and obscures the unequal politics behind
-climate change (think 'Oligarchocene', 'Capitalocene'). Better ways acknowledge
-the unequal blame and impacts, target the system for reform. I think John's
-Apocalypse does this really well.
-
-Crisis optimism or progress utopianism is no good either. No one is coming to
-save the day, and in fact, the disaster is already well underway, we cannot
-avert it, and no redemption is possible. I think John's Apocalypse deals well
-with these issues.
-
-Focusing on catastrophe also distracts from the catastrophic features of
-business as usual. Reimagine the imperialist/capitalist system as in a constant
-state of 'slow catastrophe'. Avoids both catastrophic and utopian thinking. John
-does this, too.
-
-Fernandez criticised (neo-)catastrophism, the idea that Earth's history is
-punctuated by instantaneous disasters, and we may be approaching another one if
-we don't change course. We can only avoid it or atone for it afterwards. This
-discourse obscures the harm that is already happening and will continue to
-happen, and thus obscures the need for adaptation. It also reinforces existing
-institutions rather than seeking to reform them.
-
-Kowalewski said that a lot of eco-eschatology posits a single, linear time, This
-discourse obscures ends of worlds which colonised people have already
-experienced, and obscures the imperialism and inequal causes and impacts of
-climate change. Cyclic time has issues, too. Instead we should think of time as
-spiralling.
-
-Catlin said we struggle to imagine climate catastrophe as real, literature which
-does so gets labelled 'science fiction'. (In fact, sci-fi uses the future as a
-literary convention to reveal distortions of the present.) Two present solutions
-don't solve this problem. On the one hand is crisis optimism: the crisis is
-terrible, but also an opportunity for something good to happen; the problem is
-it doesn't fit the facts: climate change is too bad, not redemptive. Traditional
-apocalypse, which he associates with 'Anthropocene' discourse (prefer
-'Oligarchocene' or 'Capitalocene') burdens people with universalised guilt, but
-is fatalistic, paralyses people, and obscures the politics of climate change. In
-the middle is 'slow catastrophe', the idea that the catastrophe is not the
-events which punctuate it as particularly unusual, but the normal background.
-The system, capitalism, is the problem. The key problems Catlin raises are
-these: 'Anthropocene' discourse obscuring the political realities, fatalism,
-unrealistic redemptive utopianism. (I think good apocalypticism can avoid all
-these things!)
-
-Skrimshire: afterlife thinking grounds our value of the present in its future
-fulfilment. But apocalyptic thinking severs this link: the present is about to
-be destroyed, and we don't know when or how! Apocalypse demolishes our world,
-our time, and utopia comes down from an external time/place. The rhetorical
-function of this is to heighten our moral imperatives for living in the present,
-and this is evident in Revelation, Paul, Daniel, Gospels. We're no longer tied
-down by distracting temporary things, we're cutting right back to what really
-matters.
-
-### @{apocalyptic-patterns}
-
-Early Christians balanced a lot of apocalyptic tensions, including now vs not
-yet. Origen, and then Augustine (City of God), wrote against literal
-interpretations of Revelation, and Augustine set the tone for Bede, Anselm,
-Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. Joachim of
-Fiore popularised a literal interpretation in the thirteenth century, and though
-he was condemned by the authorities, he had a big influence on later Hussites,
-Lutherans, and Anabaptists, who identified the Antichrist with the Pope (and
-various other people). In the Enlightenment, there was a swing from new world by
-revelation to new world by revolution: 1789, 1848, Communist Manifesto. Secular
-millenialism? Shelley's _The Last Man_ started a 19th-century trend for
-end-of-humanity novels, HG Wells can be read in that tradition. Since Barth,
-theology has re-focused on eschatology, but de-emphasised the literal facts of
-the end-times, though such speculation is alive in well in popular preaching and
-fiction.
-
-Devonport has four models of apocalyptic imagination, ways of relating ultimate
-reality (UR) and primordial time (PR) to profane time (T). One is the UR=PR
-transcends and is kneaded into T. One is that T is cyclically spinning off into
-UR, each time is an opportunity to jump off the train. Another is that T is an
-irreversible march from PR to UR, which both transcend T and are placed as
-historical endpoints within it, thus giving T meaning and structure. Another is
-the same as the third but UR is seen as a return to PR, rather than going beyond
-it.
-
-Much of this book seemed concerned with metaphysical speculation, which is fine,
-but a step removed from my concern with rhetorical strategy. I'd have to spend
-at least half a day getting more value out of this book, probably a whole day.
-If I did, I'd want to ask, how do the metaphysical speculations implied by the
-20th-century novels studied in this book give the audience hope in the face of
-adversity? But I think the question is a bit sideways to what this book is
-trying to do, perhaps what novels in general are trying to do.
-
-I was struck though by Cormac McCarthy's 2006 novel, _The Road_, in which a
-father and son struggle to survive in a post-nuclear desert, searching for other
-good people and signs of life in an environment of death. That struck me as
-related to my concerns with apocalyptic, as struggling on with the right values
-even in an environment hostile to the good.
-
-He had an idea about the hereafter as something present now beneath the surface,
-ready to burst forth. I think this is a great idea, perhaps more obvious in
-Pauline apocalypse than Revelation. However, could we say that the effect of
-mythic language as described by @{thompson-revelation}, to nest the present
-context in a larger context, does this? Is the New Jerusalem a reality
-underlying the present one, now, waiting to burst forth?
-
-### @{no-one-is-too-small}
-
-Major themes:
-
-- It's black and white. Survival or death. Tipping point or no tipping point.
-  People know this but somehow don't act on it: they say it is a big issue but
-  do nothing about it. Hypocrisy.
-- The people in power have let us down. They should be behaving like grown ups,
-  but they aren't, so children have to hold them to account. It's not right that
-  children have to speak truth and hold power to account, but some one has to do
-  it.
-- Children striking is weird, but necessary; this proves how weird the times are
-- We need radical change right now
-- This is not a political opinion, it's a scientific fact
-- People in power need to start listening to the scientists
-
-## 2026-04-23
-
-### @{xr-not-a-drill}
-
-A collection of very short essays. Biggest takeaway: false hope is thinking
-everything will turn out alright, real hope means persevering with love in the
-knowledge that things will not turn out alright, at least for a while. Aragorn
-at the Black Gate. Leaves me with a question: does true hope require us to have
-faith that things will turn out alright _eventually_, even if on the other side
-of the catastrophe?
-
-I was mostly struck by the hopefulness. @{kvandal-2025} had led me to expect XR
-folk to have no hope for change, but I never found that. Everyone has hope that
-things can change. Sam Knights, an editor an prominent XR organiser who opened
-with the first essay, said: we did our homework, we organised a civil
-disobedience campaign, we got an audience with politicians, we got Parliament to
-declare a climate crisis. We have demands for politicians. We think if we keep
-fighting we can win. Many contributors, especially in the second half about
-practical action, emphasised the need for joy at protests: bring cake, give
-police flowers, make sure it's a place that young, old and vulnerable people are
-happy to be, serve rice and dal to fellow rebels, play music and dance.
-
-Jim Bendell's essay perhaps shows what kind of 'hopelessness' @{kvandal-2025}
-was referring to. He used to think we could prevent catastrophe, but now
-predicts social breakdown in most countries by 2030, and says he may not grow
-old. He compares the realisation to Dostoevsky's false execution, saying he got
-an intensified experience of the present. He thinks that once we drop false
-hopes, we can live in the present with integrity. ('False hope' refers to belief
-that we can avoid catastrophe.) We should prepare for the inevitable disaster
-that's headed our way. We should not sacrifice our values to do whatever it
-takes to avoid the disaster, because our values are worth keeping and the
-disaster is inevitable anyway. Despair is inevitable, but love is the way
-through despair.
-
-I don't think this is a hopeless narrative. There are things worth keeping,
-which we can keep: love, integrity, experiencing the present. The 'false hope'
-is the belief that things will be alright, which in my view is a shallow kind of
-hope right from the start: real hope means perseverance in the face of
-difficulty, and that's just what Jim advocates for. Seeing that things are in
-fact pretty dreadful, and then resolving to live by what is right anyway, seems
-strikingly similar to the rhetoric of John's Apocalypse. I also thought of
-Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate, after he had seen Frodo's mail shirt and
-been convincingly lied to that Frodo had been captured. It is a stark contrast
-to the kind of 'hope' inspired by some folk who think we can stop the disaster.
-It does also express a lack of faith in the establishment. (Like John…?)
-
-Dougald Hine had a rather different kind of hope, a helpful contrast. He says,
-to survive, the impossible must happen, but we can have hope, because we can see
-signs that we live in times where the impossible happens (Brexit, Trump,
-Corbyn). He also criticised the 'sustainability' discourse behind 'plant 8
-billion trees and then we can carry on as normal', and says that 'carry on as
-normal' is not desirable in 21st-century politics. Tweaking the market, fuel
-duty, not adequate. He complained about the 'disenchantment of politics by
-economics.' His hope is that we can avert disaster by overturning the political
-system. This doesn't have the resigned pessimism to resilience move of Jim, and
-instead it promotes revolution to get change to avoid the catastrophe. It
-strikes me that Jim is much more apocalyptic than Dougald for this reason.
-
-The Apocalypse came up twice. Once, Ted Silverberg, who survived a forest fire
-in California, said of the experience 'it feels like the Apocalypse; black,
-burned and decimated … a devastating emptiness … like a hydrogen bomb … the end
-of the world.' Rowan Williams in his Afterword said that this book is not an
-apocalypse (or a jeremiad) because it expresses conviction that things can
-change. Part of me thinks, has he read the Apocalypse? But I suppose one could
-argue that the rhetoric of the Apocalypse is to get people to endure inevitable
-suffering rather than work to avert suffering, maybe that's his point. (But
-really, has he read Jeremiah?)
-
-Jay Griffiths had some striking mythical language describing a protest: 'Ancient
-values are overtly resurrected in this Easter rebellion in London: the values of
-chivalry and honour, faith in life and being service to Our Lady, Notre Dame,
-Mother Earth, the mother on whom everything else depends.' The police loved
-looking after us in our cells and said 'God bless' to us on the way out.
-Exemplifies how mythical language nests a little context into a bigger context.
-Not entirely intended to be read as 'fictional' I think, with the reference to
-'the mother on whom everything else depends.'
-
-I was struck by how Rowan Williams concluded. In his essay, he emphasised that
-'it might just work', or 'it might not'. Either way, we need to restore an
-intelligent relationship with our world.' Accept the diseased imagination of the
-culture we have created and the death count begins now. Anger, love andjoy may
-be odd bedfellows, but these are the seeds of a future that may offer life --
-not success, but life.
-
-### @{xr-declaration}
-
-'This is our darkest hour'. 'The science is clear -- we are in the sixth mass
-extinction event and we will face catastrophe if we do not act swiftly and
-robustly.' Doing nothing is madness. Since the Government has failed to protect
-us from this threat, democracy and the social contract are not in effect and it
-is our right and 'sacred duty' to rebel against the Government. We demand that
-we 'apply informed solutions' and convene a National Assembly. We rebel
-peacefully.
-
-The Declaration has hope in it: there is hope that by rebelling against the
-Government, instituting true democracy, and listening to the scientists, we can
-avert catastrophe. It is rousing rhetoric. I felt roused. It depends on hope
-that we can avert catastrophe, though, but at the same time it emphasises what a
-slim hope that is, which also leaves me feeling stressed and depressed.
-
-### @{inconvenient-truth}
-
-Big idea: global warming is happening, you can do something about it, reduce
-your own emissions and get involved in politics. International agreements can
-save the day and you can make a difference. It made me feel inspired to do
-something, it was hopeful. However, I look on his faith in politics with
-nostalgic longing, I don't feel I have that faith in UK politics now.
-
-A few things struck me especially:
-
-- Science-saviour narrative. Roger Revelle. Galileos reporting what they see,
-  inconvenient truths, against the Bellarmine fossil fuel companies. We must
-  listen to the warnings of the scientists. Fossil fuel lobby defiles the
-  prophetic office of the scientists.
-- Use of horror. Hurricane Katrina prominent. Destruction of beautiful
-  environments, polar bears drowning. Allusions to 9/11. 'Nature hike through
-  the Book of Revelations.'
-- Preciousness: Earthshot, Pale Blue Dot, reminiscences of rural idyll, as a boy
-  lots of contact with nature, no notion of the difference between work and play
-- Faith in politics, and particularly international agreements, we can do
-  something about it! (I find it difficult to get on board with this faith now,
-  as much as I would love to)
-
-Al Gore speaks over the soundtrack almost the whole time. The film featured a
-few different threads woven together:
-
-- Al Gore reminiscing about growing up in a rural idyll and going back to visit
-- Al Gore presenting his global warming presentation
-- Al Gore travelling the world on a mission to convince people to do something
-  about global warming
-- Al Gore remembering his early experiences with Roger Revelle
-
-Lots of what Al Gore was saying was illustrated with video montages. There were also isolated snippets relating the story to his 2000 election campaign and the
-time his 6-year-old son was hit by a car and nearly died.
-
-Notable features of the presentation:
-
-- Pictures of Earth, opening with Earthshot and concluding with Voyager 1's
-  Pale Blue Dot
-- We used to assume the continents were too big to move, likewise, we used to
-  assume the climate was too big to move, but we were wrong
-- Global warming is already shrinking Lake Chad, melting huge glaciers, chomping
-  chunks out of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets
-- CO2 and temperature changes are way out of order with natural changes in
-  human history and the last 650,000 years, could be in for unimaginable change
-  in what Earth looks like, comparison with Ice Ages
-- Temperatures clearly increasing, new records always being set. Results:
-  heatwaves killing thousands, hurricanes, tornadoes, typhoons, Katrina!
-- There were warnings before Katrina, now we must listen to the warnings of the
-  scientists
-- Europe had a year of catastrophes 'like a nature hike through the Book of
-  Revelations'
-- Ice getting thinner (had to sail on a nuclear sub to get their data)
-- Greenland ice sheet melting could stop Gulf Stream, plunge Europe into Ice
-  Age, last time took as little as 10 years and lasted for 1000 years
-- Nature's calendar changes
-- Sea level rise threatens 10s of millions, World Trade Center memorial
-  underwater, terrorism not our only threat
-- US contributes the most, not ratified Kyoto, though states and cities have
-
-I thought I could just tell the story to Congress and they would be startled
-into doing something. I had faith in the political process. But Congress wasn't
-startled. (Later in the film, he clearly expresses faith in politics and
-encourages people to get involved in politics.)
-
-Tobacco: we kept growing tobacco after link to lung cancer was clear. Dad grew
-tobacco all his life until mum died of lung cancer. Sometimes we hit a day of
-reckoning and wish we'd connected the dots quicker. Tobacco funded science
-denial, likewise fossil fuel lobby funds science denial, commits scientific
-fraud, persecutes scientists willing to do their duty to report what they see,
-their inconvenient truths. White House staffer removed stuff from a memo, fired,
-next day got a job at Exxon.
-
-So far, I see no signs we're about to change. Politicians don't do anything
-because their constituents don't want them to. That's why I'm on the campaign
-trail. Enough minds may change to cross a tipping point. 'City by city, person
-by person, family by family.'
-
-Some skip from denial to despair, don't! We have everything we need to do
-something about it! End-use efficiency, renewables, CCS, etc. All we need is
-political will. 'In America, political will is a renewable resource.' We made
-massive political successes: ending slavery, women's suffrage, fighting fascism,
-non-violence, Mandela, ending the nuclear arms race, ending Communism, closing
-the ozone hole. We can do it again. 'It is our time to rise again to fix our
-future.'
-
-I had the privilege to be shown the future as a young man. Revell went and
-measured CO2, was startled by what he found, joined the dots, showed it to us
-young students. 'I had the privilege to be shown it as a young man. It's almost
-as if a window was opened through which the future was very clearly visible. See
-that? he says, see that? That's the future in which you're going to live your
-life.'
-
-Future generations will ask why their parents didn't wake up. 'We need to hear that question from them now.'
-
-The film concluded with a reel of ways people can take action interspersed
-amongst the credits: reduce your personal emissions, recycle, vote, run for
-office, plant trees, speak up, support international agreements, 'if you believe
-in prayer, pray that people will find the strength to change. When you pray,
-move your feet' and get people to watch this movie. Learn about the issues and
-then do something about it.
-
-## 2026-04-22
-
-### @{ultimate-things}
-
-Different Jewish and Christian apocalypses have different rhetorical strategies
-and goals.
-
-11 key features of apocalypses:
-
-1. Alternative (spatial, temporal) worlds
-2. Visions/auditions (often dreams)
-3. Heavenly intermediaries (often angels, tour guides)
-4. Symbolism (often conventional)
-5. Pseudonymity (Rev exceptional)
-6. Cosmic catastrophe followed by ultimate deliverance
-7. Moral dualism (alongside call to repentance)
-8. Determinism (the future is set by God)
-9. Judgement and the afterlife
-10. Ex eventu prophecy
-11. Cosmic speculation (moon, stars, calendar)
-
-John's rhetorical goal is to get his audience to resist and stop participating
-in a corrupt society in order to subvert it. Neither waiting for God to fix
-everything, nor abandoning the world completely. Rev is much more political,
-anti-imperial, than the Shepherd of Hermas or the Apocalypse of Peter (which
-competed with Rev for canonisation), while the latter emphasise individual
-morality and perseverance.
-
-Violence is a big issue for today's interpreters, though one should note that
-violence is led by the Beast and the Whore; violence against them and their
-followers is portrayed as the natural backlash or righteous judgement for their
-wickedness; and the saints never commit violence.
-
-Not much here about how John achieves his rhetorical goals, so of limited use.
-
-### @{silent-spring}
-
-Her big idea: don't trust the USDA or the chemical companies, they are at best
-negligent and at worst lying. Insecticides and herbicides are poison. It is
-madness to try and control 'pests' by pouring poison over everything.
-
-Her brief first chapter is the most dramatic. She tells a fictionalised story of
-a town in the rural US where a grim spectre passes over, killing fish, birds,
-livestock, and then humans. They have poisoned themselves: some white dust still
-lingers on the gable ends.
-
-She hammers home the point that so-called 'pesticides' are in fact poison. They
-were developed in WW2 for use as chemical weapons to be used directly against
-humans; when alkyls were first discovered, they were kept secret by the Nazi
-government, recognising its potential application as a chemical weapon, and it
-is now sprayed in fields. She tells dramatic stories of poisonings of livestock,
-wild fish, birds, and humans. One story of a child who went out to play in a
-barn his father had just sprayed with alkyls, and ended up killed by poisoning.
-This theme runs through just about every chapter, a constant stream of
-horrifying stories of poisonings of humans and other creatures. Parathion kills
-hundreds yearly around the world, poisoning victims are dangerous to the
-physicians who treat them and the laundresses who wash their clothes.
-
-The chemical threat is as serious as the nuclear threat. The first chemical
-named is not a pesticide, but Strontium 90. Chemicals cause cancer, like
-radiation. (Chps 2, 14)
-
-There is a constant stream of new chemicals, far outstripping the capacity of
-nature to adapt to them or of biologists to understand them. (Chp 2)
-
-It is the first time in history that life is actively shaping its environment
-rather than adapting to its environment. (Chp 2)
-
-It is an escalating arms-race against insects who quickly develop resistance
-(Chps 2, 15).
-
-Chemical companies and the USDA lie to us or are negligently ignorant. This is
-because of their profit motive and because they pay for so much of the science.
-They label poisons as 'safe' when they are in fact poisonous. They call poison
-'insecticide' and 'herbicide' and 'pesticide' to obscure how dangerous it is to
-diverse kinds of life, including humans, not just insects, herbs, and pets. They
-exaggerate the threats, ignore the alternative solutions, exaggerate the
-effectiveness of their chemicals and deny the harms. They don't consult with
-people or even inform them, who end up poisoned without their consent. Brave
-individuals like Joseph Sweeney of Toledo, Ohio, have to fight the epistemic
-weight of respectable scientific institutions like universities, the USDA and
-the chemical companies. Some states such as Alabama and Florida are beginning to
-see through the deception. (Chps 2, 3, 8, 10, 15)
-
-There are better ways of pest control: removing infected elm trees promptly,
-flooding mosquito populations with sterile males, poisoning individual fire ant
-mounds locally rather than spraying whole countrysides. European foresters plant
-ant mounds and use birdboxes to encourage woodpeckers, encourage a diverse range
-of natural controls in balance. Chemicals destroy natural controls and thus make
-the problems worse. (Chps 8, 10, 15, 16)
-
-The Afterword was very interesting. In the view of Linda Lear, the effect of
-Silent Spring was to not only bring about regulation, but end an era of
-unquestioning trust in government agencies and chemical companies. She exposed
-that they hadn't done their homework or had lied. In a Cold War context,
-questioning the techno-scientific-industrial authorities could be perceived as
-traitorous. Chemical companies fought hard against her, sued the publishers to
-try and prevent it being published, then spent $¼ million on an aggressive
-publicity campaign against her. She was attacked for being 'emotional', an
-'hysterical woman,' her acclaimed novels cited as evidence that she couldn't be
-a real scientist, her literary style as evidence that she wasn't writing real
-science, real science is technical jargon buried in lab reports which can only
-be understood by specialists, if it's comprehensible to the public it must be
-unscientific. She had no PhD, no institution, no network of scientific
-colleagues to back her up, but still, the smear campaign failed. In a speech to
-the Women's National Press Club, she said that science was being compromised 'to
-serve the gods of profit and production.'
-
-Her big move is from lies to truth. From the way things aren't to the way things
-are. I didn't feel there was much mythical language going on. There is shock
-horror motivating action, though, including horrible futures that are starting
-now. It still feels like it places hope in the system somewhere: the solution is
-government regulation. Its effectiveness gives one pause for thought: perhaps
-horror can be an effective motivator for political action.
-
-There's a link between her battle against the chemical lobby and the idea of
-apocalyptic literature as defending a cognitive minority
-(@{thompson-revelation}). It's not obvious that she achieves that goal by
-apocalyptic means, but maybe there is something here: her authority is not based
-on institutions or standard instruments of verification, but based on empirical
-evidence. Is that like what John of Patmos does?
-
-## 2026-04-21
-
-### @{thompson-revelation}
-
-I was particularly struck by three big ideas, all of which I could understand a
-great deal better:
-
-- Revelation nests local contexts inside bigger contexts, finally the widest
-  possible context: cosmos. This is the role of mythological language. Although
-  the beast and Rome e.g. are connected by mythological language, the imagery cannot be reduced to mere
-  correspondence; Asian social life is found in the relationship between images
-  within, not outside, the world of the vision.
-- John's vision is not characterised by deep metaphysical dualism, conflict or
-  crisis, but rather 'moves from unbroken wholeness to unbroken wholeness.'
-- There is no evidence for a crisis facing John's audience imposed on Christians
-  from without, except perhaps a cognitive crisis induced because they are a
-  'cognitive minority,' that is, a community centred around 'deviant knowledge.'
-  Rather than responding to an obvious crisis, John interprets a situation which
-  is only a crisis from his point of view. The conflict he sees is
-  intra-Christian, not Christian-Roman.
-
-Other ideas:
-
-- Traditionally, scholars assumed that Revelation addressed a current crisis,
-  viz Domitianic persecution. But there is no evidence for a Domitianic
-  persecution. Schmidtals: apocalyptic imagination completely unrelated to
-  external crisis. Compromise: apocalypse reacts to a perceived crisis only
-  visible as a crisis from the apocalyptic point of view.
-- Apocalypses expand our vision of the world to include transcendent realities,
-  expanding in both temporal and spatial dimensions
-- John uses forms from the apocalyptic genre, viz, crisis, exhortations to
-  remain faithful, comfort, hope, even though there is no apparent crisis, no
-  need for faith/comfort/hope, except from his apocalyptic point of view
-- Revealed knowledge is a challenge to public knowledge, embedded in temples,
-  courts, priests, judges, governors, libraries, architecture, etc, thus
-  controlled by the empire or 'cognitive majority'
-- Traditionally, readers of all kinds have assumed that the end-times are the
-  central concern of apocalyptic literature, but Thompson centres it on the
-  concept of 'revealed literature', meeting the challenge from the cognitive
-  majority
-
-### @{kvandal-2025}
-
-Big idea: pessimistic climate activists who believe in unavoidable mass
-extinction, use a Green Apocalypse narrative to simulate the adverse potential
-reality of human extinction, and as a result, carry out symbolic, ritualistic
-acts to restore a virtual sense of agency in place of the real agency they
-believe they have lost.
-
-The authors believe there is a cross-cultural end-time narrative, though this
-isn't really important. What matters is the particular instance of the Green
-Apocalypse: the world is imminently coming to an end because of climate change,
-and there's nothing anyone can do. The evil fossil fuel lobby is the cause of
-it. We may be able to 'save' ourselves, if only in a moral sense, if we act now.
-
-Environmentalists are on an optimism-pessimism spectrum. The optimists believe
-we can do something about it, and have hope that existing institutions:
-governments, COPs, the UN, science, technology, can avert the worst catastrophe
-if we act now. Pessimists sometimes explicitly abjure hope: perhaps hope is
-perceived as a sign that you're still buying the optimist's progress narrative.
-Pessimists like XR, Greta Thunberg express feelings of betrayal with respect to
-the establishment.
-
-The Green Apocalypse does not inspire hope, it inspires horror, fear etc.
-
-Narratives may evoke horror, fear, in order to simulate situations you can't
-practice for real. Human extinction an extreme example of this.
-
-When people feel they have no real agency, they may use ritual to give them a
-feeling of virtual agency. This may be what pessimistic climate activists are up
-to when they engage in activism, sail across the Atlantic in a zero-carbon
-sailing vessel to COP19, etc.
-
-Their argument feels like it stops short to me. They seem to portray their
-subjects as if they're trying to deceive themselves into feeling OK when their
-beliefs only give them rational reasons to despair. If this is true, it is
-deplorable, it is a condemnation of these people, it describes them as irrational, deliberately dishonest.
-
-It is striking that some people think that action begins when hope dies. This
-goes against my assumptions.
-
-Their Green Apocalypse seems to be just the target of the criticisms raised by
-@{flannery-2024}. I felt they should have addressed the dangers of such
-narratives raised in that article, but they didn't.
-
-### @{flannery-2024}
-
-Flannery offers five big reasons why 'climate apocalypse' is unhelpful and
-should be avoided.
-
-1. 'Apocalypse' is reduced in many folks' imaginations to 'end of the world',
-   missing out the world-creating aspects of traditional apocalyptic, inspiring
-   despair and thus leading to inaction.
-2. (For many evangelical Christians) if climate change is identified with the
-   end times, that encourages people to welcome climate change instead of fight
-   it.
-3. If climate change is the end times, human action to avert it is irrelevant,
-   or given over to a scientific/technological/industrial saviour.
-4. Apocalypses punish the wicked and vindicate the righteous. When climate
-   apocalypses are told in e.g. the US, this suggests that the US is a victim,
-   not an instigator, of climate change, which is perverse.
-5. Climate apocalypse obscures the fact that human beings are responsible for
-   climate change.
-
-Before that, he makes a few big points:
-
-- Industrial CO2 is causing major climate change, causing unprecedented
-  existential threats to human civilization and wellbeing. The scientists tell
-  us that we must cut emissions sharply immediately to avoid the worst effects
-  and setting off tipping points. Our leading prospect for change, international
-  collective action by nations, is unlikely to deliver the necessary change in
-  time.
-- Journalists and campaigners are increasingly using 'climate apocalypse'.
-- Audiences' intentions, moods, and actions are guided by millenia of social
-  memory, which embed associations between 'apocalypse' and a web of meanings,
-  even unconsciously.
-
-I think Flannery exposes some real and serious dangers with climate apocalyptic.
-However, he under-explores positive possibilities: the world-creating aspects of
-traditional apocalyptic, unconsciously embedded in social memories even by those
-who think 'apocalypse' = 'end of the world.'
-
-It would be worth responding to all these criticisms of climate apocalypse,
-especially points 2, 3, 4, and 5. I have inklings how this might be done, to the
-end that some climate apocalyptic is bad, but some avoids these problems.
-
-## 2026-04-17
-
-### @{revelation-vision-of-a-just-world}
-
-Big idea: Revelation can be used today from a hegemonic point of view to justify
-hatred and revenge. It should not be so used. Revelation should be read from a
-marginal point of view to invoke commitment and resistance.
-
-Fiorenza emphasises that readers should not attempt to recover the
-scientifically objective 'first meaning' of Revelation, because Revelation is a
-work of rhetoric, which means that its meaning is partly determined by its
-audience. We have a responsibility to interpret it in ways which do good things.
-
-She reckons John is writing from a marginal point of view. He vilifies the rich
-churches like at Laodicaea, and praises the poor and oppressed ones like Smyrna
-and Philadelphia.
-
-John is writing against other Christian prophets, one of whom he gives the
-slanderous name 'Jezebel'. They seem to be arguing for a reasonable compromise
-with the imperial cult. In contrast, John is appealing to his readers to keep
-well away from the imperial cult. His visions depict Rome as a mythical beast in
-opposition to God and an agent of Satan, and promise that those who resist will
-enjoy God's eschaton in New Jerusalem.
-
-Fiorenza thinks that interpreting the visions of Revelation allegorically or
-typologically as representing past, present or future historical events is a bad
-plan. But she also thinks it is a bad plan to spiritualise the visions,
-understanding them as merely describing the theological truth of God's justice
-etc, as this kills off the critique of injustice and hope for a better world,
-and scrubs out the complex inter-relationships between symbols in the visions.
-
-I sense her view is something like this. In order to portray Rome for the way it
-really is, John describes Rome in a way it literally isn't. Rome is the harlot,
-the beast, the servant of Satan. Kings, merchants, and sailors will mourn over
-her. She will be cast into an everlasting lake of fire, and because of her all
-human beings will be killed. Those who resist Rome will rule in God's empire,
-not just a bigger Rome but an upside-down one as well, where there are no
-oppressive, life-destroying forces. None of these things are literally true, but
-they can't and shouldn't be reduced to an underlying allegorical, typological or
-theological truth, either. The vision, preserved in its imaginative wholeness,
-enjoins us to re-see Rome for what it really is. This reconfigures the way we
-approach moral decisions, like whether to eat food sacrificed to idols or to
-honour an image of the emperor.
-
-In particular, John seems to imagine Rome as a pretender God. It has usurped his
-place in the world, demanded obeisance and seized power with force which rightly
-belonging to God alone. When Christians compromise with the imperial cult, they
-declare their submission to Rome's fake self-deity, and thus abandon their
-commitment to the one God, the one source of life, the one hope of peace and
-justice. In his view, even when it is disruptive, Christians must resist the
-symbolic universe of the Roman imperial cult which sets up imperial power as a
-fake God, and worship the true God instead.
-
-Hope? She emphasises the marginal perspective from which John writes, and how he
-gives mythological encouragement, that those who pay now because of the
-oppressive powers of the world have their reward in heaven. The battle against
-Satan is already going on, and the martyrs have staked their lives on the
-winning side.
-
-## 2026-04-16
-
-### @{climate-history-modern-world-v2}
-
-The big idea: the climate has not been stable in human history, it has been
-erratic, and this has had a big impact on human history. It is likely to
-continue having a big impact on us, and so we should strive to understand
-climate much better, so we can forecast how it will change in the future and act
-rationally to prepare for it.
-
-I found it utterly fascinating. Somehow it took the edge out of climate
-apocalypse, knowing that humans have lived with a constantly changing climate
-since forever. The climate change we face now seems less of the utterly unique –
-apocalyptic? – challenge it is typically portrayed, and more like just one more
-of humanity's endless train of difficulties. We've done it before, we can do it
-again...? However, I do wonder if the climate forecasting has become much more
-mature since he wrote, and anthropogenic climate change is in fact likely to be
-much more extreme than historic natural changes in the climate.
-
-I also found his analysis shallow and scientistic. His narrative suggests that
-the modern world is, and should be, run by scientific knowledge. If we can only
-acquire the scientific knowledge, and get it in the hands of decision-makers,
-they will make rational decisions and things will turn out more or less in a
-sensible and efficient manner. There is no notion that political systems are
-systematically incapable of behaving sensibly, nor that human relationship with
-nature is fundamentally broken.
-
-In his view, we currently have several major climate forecasts on different
-timescales: a natural warming on a scale of centuries which started about 1700,
-a natural cooling on a scale of decades which started about 1900, an impending
-ice age which may strike any time in the next one or two thousand years, and a
-warming caused by industrial atmospheric pollution. These temperature changes
-have unpredictable knock-on effects on wind and rain, including extreme weather
-events such as droughts, hurricanes and monsoons.
-
-In his view, current (first ed. 1982, present second ed. 1995) forecasts of
-human-caused global warming are exaggerated beyond the evidence. It is clear
-that human pollution will have some significant impact on the climate, but it's
-not currently known whether this will compare much in scale with natural
-variation. He suspects that even with modern technology, human powers pale in
-comparison to the power of nature.
-
-We must know more! Climate change has big impacts, and we don't adequately
-understand how it changes, whether naturally or by human intervention.
-
-His main concern is food security, particularly in the light of growing global
-populations, in his view, the most significant challenge the human race faces
-over the next century. His history focuses on crops, and so does his future. He
-tells the story of how in the 1950s, a new breed of wheat, Heines VII, within
-years of its invention represented 80% of the wheat crop in the Netherlands due
-to its resistance to yellow rust disease. In 1956, a new strain of yellow rust
-emerged, and two-thirds of the winter wheat harvest was lost. We need genetic
-diversity, and likewise, we need resilience, flexibility, and safety margins in
-our food, population, agriculture, and energy policies.
-
-He describes how the climate of the twentieth century has been in flux in
-complex ways, not simply getting warmer, and getting significantly cooler
-1940-80. No known factor, including industrial CO2, can explain the timing of
-the changes, including the general warming from c. 1700. We can't presently know
-whether the present warm spell will continue or end in a sudden cooling, as
-occurred after the balmy year of 1540 was succeeded by the coldest period of the
-Little Ice Age.
-
-## 2026-04-15
-
-### @{net-zero}
-
-A very calm, practical book. Economics for a popular audience. The big idea: we
-need unilateral action, not multilateral. Each nation that obeys these three
-principles will eliminate their contribution to climate change in the cheapest
-and most effective way: polluter pays, public money for public goods, net
-environmental benefit. Decarbonisation is costly, a carbon tax is the most efficient way of pricing this cost in.
-
-I found him persuasive.
-
-I was surprised to see his statistics showing that the world as a whole has done
-nothing to stop causing climate change, and has continued to accelerate at the
-same rate. However, I was convinced, because of his pivot from looking at
-production to looking at consumption. While Europe has hugely decreased its
-contribution to carbon production, its contribution to carbon consumption has
-not budged, because it has offshored its heavy industries to China, where those
-industries are fuelled by coal.
-
-It was not particularly hope-inspiring. It put the onus on national politicians,
-and I already don't feel hopeful that national politicians in the UK or much
-anywhere else are capable of doing anything sensible. He persuaded me that this
-is a sensible, practical course of action, but not that there is any likelihood
-that it will happen nor that there is anything beyond mere token acts that I can
-do to change anything. I enjoyed his candid, lucid, practical style. I felt like
-he's the right sort of person to be running the country.
-
-### @{heat}
-
-George Monbiot had a hard-nosed pop-science proposal for the cheapest way we
-could run the UK with a 90% cut in carbon emissions. He described what consumers
-would need to be consuming, what infrastructure would need to exist. He didn't
-attempt to explain the political route to get there. So, a utopian vision rather
-than Realpolitik? His ultimate plea to his readers is to join a campaign group,
-so that politicians will start making regulations to prohibit us from making
-polluting consumption choices, albeit in ways which minimise the cost to our
-lives of luxury. I was struck by his account (Chp 11) of how he struggled to
-connect his abstract technological proposals to the people he beholds with his
-eyes.
-
-In his view, the problem with much environmental political campaigning up to now
-is that it has assumed that consumers need to carry a very heavy burden, we need
-to stop living the lives of luxury which fossil fuels have enabled, but this is
-not politically feasible, because people don't want to give up their lives of
-luxury.
-
-Chp 1: in the Permian extinction, 90% of species and nearly all plants died. We are already on a course for droughts and shortages of water and food, and the melting of the Greenland ice cap. 2C of warming will unleash feedback loops.
-
-Chp 2: Exxon funds climate misinformation, which ends up in mainstream media and
-high politics.
-
-Chp 11: it's hard to turn abstract scientific discussion into something
-concrete. It's hard to connect it to the people I see with my eyes. I'm
-vulnerable to hoping of a technological deus ex machina, but it's a dangerous
-hope and must be extinguished. You need now to join a climate change campaign
-group to pressure politicians to limit our freedom to continue polluting.
-
-### @{turned-out-nice-again}
-
-Richard Mabey pushed me to indigenise myself with my weather environment. He
-showed how the weather can integrate with our moods, our art, our sense of
-beauty, hope, joy, our activities and lifestyles, our environment. Living in
-tune with the weather can lead us to react better to climate change, as we
-listen to and accommodate the weather instead of fighting it.
-
-Chp 5 argued that we need to accommodate the weather. He pointed to two events.
-The first was the 1987 storm, how people said 'trees are at great danger from
-nature,' when in fact, when we left the trees alone, they grew back with gusto.
-Another is the slow advance of the sea along East Anglia's coastline, which
-created the Broads in the thirteenth century, leading to houses on stilts and
-special shoes, and now means a revival of stilt-houses, solar-powered boats, and
-bin-barges. He told the story of the Jolly Sailors in Orford, where punters took
-to the tables during a storm surge to carry on drinking, the landlord diving to
-the cellar to retrieve the beer, the plaque now on the wall commemorating the
-highest waterline. Contrast with building badly designed houses on floodplains,
-or not building houses at all.
-
-Chp 4 was about halcyon days, howthey can give a snub to big world events,
-though seemingly only in an 'allegorical' way, seemingly nothing more than
-making one feel better about things. Not about deep hope in my opinion, more
-about living in tune with the weather.
-
-## 2026-04-14
-
-### @{wilding}
-
-Isabella Tree made me feel hopeful. (I was already in an emotional state after
-reading @{losing-eden}.) I was on the edge of tears three times while reading
-_Wilding_.
-
-_Wilding_ is the story of how Isabella and her husband rewilded their farm at Knepp in Sussex over twenty years, and the explosion of wildlife that resulted.
-
-She tells a story of how, while we destroy nature in so much of the world at
-large, this is a little haven, and you can do something to build a little haven,
-too.
-
-Could this have something in common with the vision of the New Jerusalem?
-
-A phrase that stuck out to me (and nearly made me cry twice) was 'keystone
-species' – if we start behaving properly, we humans can become a keystone
-species.
-
-> Brooke and Banksy \[two newly introduced beavers\] got straight to work.
-> Within weeks, they had cut down or coppiced dozens of shrubs and small trees,
-> and built a lodge and several dams. From a tiny, trickling stream, they have
-> created a pond nearly 2 acres in size. In the sizzling drought of that summer
-> \[2022\], the beaver pen was a haven for wildlife, and emerald-green
-> _*watery kingdom*_, filled with insects and birdsong.
-
-I noticed her revulsion at the term 'weed', and insisted that so-called 'weeds'
-are in fact native grasses and wildflowers. We should never call them 'weeds'
-because they are very productive for wildlife.
-
-There was also a theme of 'letting nature take care of itself.'
-
-She uses modern agricultural animals (though often rare breeds) to mimic the
-ecological role of ancient native animals, many of which are now globally
-extinct.
-
-The scrog took over Knepp. With grazing to keep it in check and prevent it
-turning into dense canopy, scrog is good for wildlife.
-
-She hates pesticides and artificial fertilisers.
-
-Knepp is home to rare species threatened and/or in decline elsewhere, like
-turtle doves, white storks, nightingales.
-
-### @{losing-eden}
-
-Lucy Jones made me feel hopeful. She made me want to get outside, touch nature
-from the inside, take action, love, laugh, work. She made me feel that nature is
-wonderful, and within reach, and we can do something, and we must do something
-now, so let's go! Hooray, what joy! She made me go outside. I went to the shops
-and found myself dangling my toes in the Braid Burn. I pondered what I could do.
-I felt angry and frustrated when I couldn't think of what to do.
-
-Key themes:
-
-- We need nature for our mental health
-- We have and are isolating ourselves from nature, which is suicidal
-- We are in a crisis, and it will get worse until we change course
-- We must stop destroying and start cherishing nature urgently
-- We under-value nature, as if it is optional, not critical
-- We must change our relationship with nature urgently
-
-In Chp 1, she had a moving account of how in early adolescence, she turned her
-emotional life off with depression and substance abuse, she became numb. To
-recover, she needed nature. Recovery groups in churches with gardens. She felt
-an urgent desire for nature. She walked in Walthamstow Marshes. Variety,
-physicality, communion of species, light, wholeness vs alienation, isolation,
-darkness, narrowness.
-
-Chp 2. Evolutionary explanation for this? Biophilia hypothesis.
-
-Chp 3. Children need outdoor play. UK forest schools lead the way. Joy for
-children and for teachers.
-
-Chp 6. Hard to persuade people to go for a walk in the woods, not what anyone
-around them does, deviant, even though it's good for them.
-
-Chp 7. Hard, irritating, to imagine the damage done by our consumption, the lies
-of advertising. We don't see the damage we do. Grief perhaps needed, can
-paralyse but can spur into action. I frequently worry about my daughter's
-future, relate to BirthStrikers. I lead my daughter in thanking the food, not
-just farmers, 'pig' not 'pork'.
-
-Chp 8. Druid: as Jung exposed the psychological importance of sex, we're having
-a similar revelation now about the psychological importance of nature.
-
-Chp 10. Detroit, a biophilic city. Wild Law / Earth Jurisprudence. When the
-Oneida had to move out of New York City, wolves were in the way, at the council
-meetings, they asked, 'who speaks for the wolf?'
-
-Chp 11. 'At the moment, the relationship between us and the natural world feels
-like that of a truculent teenage daughter and her mother.' We need to fall in
-love with nature again, stop destroying it, 'emergency,' 'Hero myth' of control
-has gone too far. Time is not on our side. We must walk in the woods, say thanks
-for our food, design biophilic cities, messy gardens, issue wildlife ID cards,
-et alia. 'Becoming indigenous to place.' I used to feel fear at 'climate chaos
-that would cause apocalyptic global instability,' guilt at having second child.
-Now I feel hopeful. Action is happening. Changing relationship: not conquerors
-but co-tenants.
-
-## 2026-04-13
-
-### @{greenhouse-effect}
-
-Key themes:
-
-- Warning
-- Catastrophe now and in near future
-- Government action
-- International co-operation
-- Hidden threat
-- Urgency, crisis
-- Scientific knowledge critically important
-
-The authors emphasised that catastrophic effects of atmospheric pollution are
-happening now and will get worse. The drought of 1988 in Africa and the USA,
-threats of food shortage, and the ozone hole features prominently, but so do
-floods, sea level rise, et alia.
-
-Chp 1: increasing danger. The cause is all around us: combustion. (Hidden
-threat?)
-
-They emphasise action from governments and businesses. They briefly diverge to
-claim that their book is addressed to individuals (Chp 8), asserting that the
-root cause of the greenhouse effect is individual behaviour. But then it
-subjects individual behaviour to bigger forces: ignorance (media environment),
-poverty, third-world debt, corporate greed. It immediately turns to 'stories of
-hope' entirely focused on action by NGOs, development banks, and governments.
-However, it does also feature consumer advice, esp. Chp 7.
-
-I noted an epigram by TH Huxley at the beginning of TH Huxley. The scientists to
-the rescue of society?
-
-Chp 5: Everest had three approaches. Budyko infamous for the wait-and-see
-approach, accused of 'swearing in church', implies scientific research, not
-enough happening. Adaptation necessary; climate change used as a bad excuse for
-inaction by leaders in the Sahel. Moderation of the greenhouse effect also
-necessary, implies not reducing consumption or limiting economic growth but
-energy efficiency and renewables. Tim Wirth gave a speech to the US Senate
-condensing Earth's history into 100 years: we must act in the next four seconds.
-
-'Experiment' language used frequently. WMO 1985. Thatcher 27 Sep 1988 at annual dinner of Royal Society, 'Mrs Greenmantle,' motivated by public opinion, Hinkley Point, international politics? 'The massive experiment is going awry.'
-
-There was a story in Chp 4 that international politics is waking up to the
-threat. Thatcher, Bush 'White House effect', Gorbachov saying traditional
-industrialisation means environmental catastrophe. In Chp 8, optimistic about
-international co-operation, climate change as a common enemy around which the
-divisions of the world must and therefore will crumble, ideological/economic
-systems likely to converge, 'universal crusade to save the planet.'
-
-Also in Chp 4: 'environmental security' idea, protecting environment needed for national security, climate change already causing millions of climate refugees.
-
-Book written as a warning. Chp 4: 'We must begin to take action to reduce global
-warming. And we must learn that global warming is in reality a global warning to
-heed the thresholds of ecological tolerance. The massive experiment is going
-wrong.'
-
-Chp 2 an interesting history of climate science and action. 1957, Scripps, Roger
-Revelle. 'Great geophysical experiment.' Mauna Loa vs Antarctic cores showed CO2
-had increased since 1850. Early 1970s, computer models showing increasing CO2
-and temperatures. No interest in first WCC 1979 Geneva, Kenneth Hare biting his
-nails, but it created WCP with a remit to 'warn governments.' It produced dire
-warnings. Needed alarmism to provoke interest? Prophetic function? Major warming
-and weather events (esp droughts) helped to generate attention.
-
-Chp 3. Climate change in the past makes the world look weird: extinctions of
-major animals, Europe with no trees, hippos in the Sahara 6000ya. 21st century
-may be more extreme, we can't know how much. Strong emphasis on 'we don't know
-enough and need more research.'
-
-### @{lost-words}
-
-I noticed:
-
-- Icons
-- Jumbled letters hiding in the environment
-- Bramble apocalypse
-- Weasel-fire connection: 2 Pet 3:10?
-- Things hidden in plain sight
-- Remembering things (words, names) that had been forgotten
-- Naming things without names
-
-## References