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diff --git a/reading-log.md b/reading-log.md index a4a4eeb..6183cc7 100644 --- a/reading-log.md +++ b/reading-log.md @@ -6,6 +6,43 @@ author: Joe Carstairs ## 2026-04-27 +### @{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. |