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## Chapter 2
Thesis: anti-apocalyptic criticism of R mis-diagnoses the problem.
6. The effect on R's audience now is a spiralling cycle of despair
7. This has led some critics to blame apocalypticism for the failure of R
8. This is a traditional criticism of apocalypticism 'from above'
9. Apocalypse 'from below' has often worked very differently
10. This difference is due to the different interests of the readers -- a
difference which does not apply in the case of green crises
11. In fact, apocalypse can meet the critic's concerns in principle
12. (In order to do so in practice, those with power need to attack the
structures which drive the downward spiral)
Since contemporary green rhetoric doesn't work, the rhetors think they need to
increase the temperature, and drive towards increasingly dire warnings of
impending catastrophe, thinking that people just need more of a shove. They call
on the familiar symbolic language of nuclear winter. The interests of mass media
also favours this catastrophism. This only leads feelings of powerlessness to
degenerate into despair.
This has led many people to think that this catastrophism is the root cause of
the problem. Some have even labelled this trope 'apocalypticism' and thus blamed
the apocalyptic imagination, accusing apocalypse as being life-denying,
pessimistic, quietist, destructive, and hopeless. They point out that while
catastrophic narratives often place the catastrophe in a sudden event in the
near future, green issues such as climate change are often gradual, continuous
events which have already started.
In fact, the Apocalypse of St John is very different from catastrophism.
For St John, there is no impending catastrophe that his audience can avert. The
tribulations have already begun, and are largely in the hands of cosmic forces
far bigger than his audience. The exhortation is not to avert the bad thing, but
to endure it.
St John uses mythological language to place the present tribulations of his
community in a cosmic and eschatological context. This is how the call to endure
can make sense to his audience. In contrast, mere catastrophism does not do
this, and may even emphasise the meaninglessness of individual action.
John's apocalyptic imagination uses mythological language to reveal the world of
appearances for what it really is. The ideology of Empire is a pretender God,
and the suffering of the martyrs is in fact God's way of conquering evil. John
may have created a crisis for a people that didn't see one, a people that needed
'waking up'. So, while catastrophism imagines that all humanity approaches the
catastrophe more or less from the same perspective, and thus works to kill
politics, John's apocalyptic imagination imagines precisely the opposite: he
enlivens political criticism and active resistance to dominant structures by
identifying how people relate unequally to them.
So people today, when they equate apocalypticism with catastrophism, are cutting
out most of the apocalyptic imagination and distorting its message. This is now
new. This is a very traditional move which functions to shut down radical
dissent against dominant structures.
Meanwhile, those who have read the Apocalypse 'from below' tend to emphasise how
it has a visionary interpretation of the tribulations of this world, and a
visionary expectation of this world being transformed, and use this vision to
motivate movements for transformational social change.
The apocalyptic form is therefore not the reason that green rhetoric is failing.
As explored in chapter 1, green rhetoric is failing because it is failing to
diagnose the root causes of the problem, present a credible route to a credible
solution, and address an audience that could be persuaded to make a difference.
Were rhetors to solve these problems, they could use apocalyptic effectively.
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