But sometimes an apocalypse is required for the world to get in line with your fantasies. Which at least partially explains why so many apocalyptic tales these days seem to be driven by such heavy doses of wishful thinking. Take the sugary, armageddon-flavored nuggets of NBC’s new doomsday hit Revolution. Unlike the cautionary tales scripted by futuristic visionaries like George Orwell or JG Ballard, Revolution feels like a child’s clumsily drawn daydream, one that lands halfway between Dungeons and Dragons and Real Simple magazine.
[…]
It’s hard not to feel a rush of yearning for this simple if violent existence. The characters’ goals are concrete and simple: hit the road in search of help or information; subvert your malevolent overlords — local, observable foes, as opposed to the faceless, splintered, omnipresent enemies we increasingly protest; hide your firearms and your American flags from evil outside forces.
The bottom line is we, as a country, a society, and a people, are so fucked up that wiping it all out and starting over has become a hoped for fantasy. Too hard to fix, so time to start over.
Alfie and Uncle Dave agree.
You live in the richest country in the history of the world and you’re whining like moronic teenage emos. You both need to be bitch slapped up the side of the head and grow up.
You read too much into what I said. I was paraphrasing the article, not agreeing with it.
Apocalyptic movies and television have been around since the 50’s. It’s just a different type horror film. Remember The Day the Earth Stood Still, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Omega Man, The Last Man on Earth, On the Beach, War of the Worlds, When Worlds Collide.
I love this stuff. Except for Revolution….it sucks.
This is why we need a real space program that reaches for the stars!
All these daydreamers for a simpler, more rugged life could be colonizing new worlds. They would have a chance to start over, anew, and build a civilization to believe in.
And get them the F**k Out of Here so they rest of us can get on with life, without having to listen to them bitch and moan how everything would be so much better if they were in charge.
Bummer. Can’t hitch a ride on Hale-Bopp like the Heaven’s Gate folks did in 1997. It won’t be back until 4385.
No worries. Next train departs 2013:
http://goo.gl/wtrRk
McCullough says:
12/1/2012 at 9:35 pm
Apocalyptic movies and television have been around since the 50′s. /// Well…. the bible and most creation myths end with destruction. I think current physics says we will end with ice. A slight variation: escapist fiction a la Robinson Crusoe and such.
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Uncle Dave says:
12/1/2012 at 9:30 pm
You read too much into what I said. I was paraphrasing the article, not agreeing with it. //// I don’t think so. Re read what you wrote yourself: “The bottom line is we, as a country, a society, and a people, are so fucked up that wiping it all out and starting over has become a hoped for fantasy. Too hard to fix, so time to start over.” //// We are dealing with movies/tv/POP CULTURE—which has always been a diversion to put the peeples to sleep so the overlords of commerce can run away with the profits.
Same as it always was.
Sleep soundly.
Again, my extreme republican boss and his family, plus extensions, are so worry about Obama winning they are expecting an apocalypse. This is no joke. They’ve been buying guns and stock piling ammo. Hell, he’s even showed me and ask why I ain’t doing the same.
There is something wrong with these people. Reality is so far gone from their view. I just hope something doesn’t snap and one of them go postal. Add to that we’re selling gun cases like mad. Some people are just fcked up.
Theone >> “There is something wrong with these people. Reality is so far gone from their view.”
As with all groups of people, the “prep’ers” cover a wide range of thought, from those who believe that things are not getting better and the world is heading towards depression/hyperinflation times, to those who believe that aliens/solar EMPs/caldera explosions are going to wipe out the world.
Those who fall into the former category are imho not crazy as you state. Have you watched the news lately? Have you seen what is going on in the EU as one example?
If you believe that won’t happen to the USA, with the government taking all of the money from the poor taxpayers et al to give it to the rich bankers et al, then you are the one who is far from reality.
LMAO, this is why I love coming to DU. You guys are just as extreme as my boss. I should look at Europe? Hell, I’ve been using Europe, especially France, in my arguments before our recession. I have family there. You sheep seem to follow what is currently available for you to digest.
I think that is a good thing though because if you knew what was going on in Africa, Mexico and the other countries that aren’t in the mainstream news you really stock up on guns 🙂
LMAO, have a great day.
You all realize that the doomsdayers are carry-overs from the Y2K bullcrap. They lost (or made) huge amounts of money and prestige, and so they continue to try to make some apocalypse happen to justify their existence.
In some cynical section of myself, it would be nice if all the idiots killed themselves at once, just to lessen the din. However, compassion suggests it’s better to try to teach them not to be as stupid rather than just excise them.
I think most people don’t realize that our economy changed radically in the past 30-40 years, and that many of these people were doing non-thinking, dead-end jobs that don’t exist any more. Instead of rebuilding themselves and learning new things they waste their time trying to revert the country to some historical oddity, in the hopes they will become relevant again.
It’s largely childishness and laziness, encapsulated in moronity.
I have noticed that financial collapse is the libertarian’s rapture… a giant “I told you so” to the world.
The Roman Empire took centuries to collapse. Grapes, banquets and orgies are on my list, with looting for desert.
I like your outlook, some have a head start and it’s going on in Sin City.
Uncle Dave’s response to his original posting:” I was paraphrasing the article, not agreeing with it.”
Turn on the bull shit meter.
Uncle Dave is a sick son-of-a-bitch who needs to be locked up and then throw away the key.
“The bottom line is we, as a country, a society, and a people, are so fucked up that wiping it all out and starting over has become a hoped for fantasy. Too hard to fix, so time to start over.”
Holy bat shit. Anyone who read the article would understand Uncle Dave was commenting with sarcasm directed at the preppers and other sheep watching these NEW end of society movies or programs. Jbenson, your the one who should have the BS meter as your avatar.
The wish-fulfillment fantasies inherent inmost of today’s apocalyptic tales are echoed in so many of the comments here, yearning for an Ayn Rand-ish world. Rand is the biggest fantasist I’ve ever read, and so many have swallowed her fantasies whole. All these fantasies lack is the secret high station of the protagonist common to the adolescent Deus ex machina dream: “Luke, your father was a Jedi Knight,” “Yer a wizard, Harry,” etc.
RTFA to see what I mean. It’s not long and it’s fairly entertaining.
everyone sing along……
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
And I feel fine…..
There is a word for ‘delight in foretelling misfortune’ which isn’t quite schadenfreude. The people who laugh at a building that collapses just after they left it. Who delight in sharing tales of near death experiences with nervous hospital patients. Having young children present in the hospital theatre during birth. Cultivating and luxuriating in the macabre and delivery of woe. You all know who you are!
Some trends to be noted by the prudent.
Gun sales are booming.
The price of gold is climbing.
Preppers are going main stream.
Small and not so small business people are asking themselves how the bleep am I supposed to survive what the government is doing to me?
A lot of people now have food stashes and a lot people are reporting having had to dip into those stashes. It looks like having a major stash of food is very reasonable and prudent.
Oakland and some other locations I could name are good places to have a loaded gun handy in your home because the cops may be a while showing up and the criminals know it.
Many people are going back to living the way it was decades ago.
A large number of so-called “prep’ers” simply do the same things that our grandparents did (food stocks of the essentials, canning and preserves, hunting, self-reliance) because the distance between the wealthy and poor was so great.
We all watch the news. The distance between the wealthy and poor is becoming greater. The “middle class” is disappearing, the “american dream” is now a fantasy.
Politicians increase taxation and state that “you aren’t poor, because you own a refrigerator!”.
So why is there so much scoffing at those living by similar means as our grandparents?
Its been used before countless times in history.
The last time it was used in the English speaking world* is since Charles II placed control of the money supply in private hands with the English Free Coinage Act of 1666.
If you’re suffering and your bank isn’t, maybe it shouldn’t be a bank at all.
The reason we’re attempting to shore up the banks at all is middle class guilt.
The banks made bad loans.
It should be the banks’ problems.
Not some citizen’s who doesn’t have a choice.
If JP Morgan Chase or Bank of America or Barclays or HSBC are having a hard time living with the loans they made, I really don’t see why I should give a shit.
Hit reset, flush the dead and start over.
*There are lots of examples of the privatization scheme failing. Its called shit happening, in Iberia (the holy roman empire was founded and then foundered on debt,) in Holland, in Germany (after WW I,) in France (with periodic devaluation of the Franc,) in Zimbabwe (with the collapse of the zDollar.)
Food stockpiles? It’s called a pantry dumbasses. I wonder how many people know how to kill and clean an animal or fish or even plant a seed and cultivate a plant (other than weed).
I hope for the Walking Dead almost every day I see Obomba make a speech.
The bottom line is we, as a country, a society, and a people, are so fucked up that wiping it all out and starting over has become a hoped for fantasy. Too hard to fix, so time to start over.
Not quite right. I don’t think anyone is actually hoping for an apocalypse. Rather, a growing number of people do seem to see one unavoidably coming (usually religious nuts and/or poor people which seem to go hand in hand). Any post apocalyptic fantasy only begins where reality seems to be leading us. And any fantasizing about it is about all anyone outside the power rings of their government can do.
And who can blame these apocalyptic “visionaries” either?! When the social elite seem to be on an ever increasing greed kick and with governments either unable or unwilling to do their job(s), it’s pretty easy to be pessimistic if not outright angry. And it’s that anger that I think you may be confusing for a hopeful apocalypse. More likely, it’s a hopeful REVOLUTION!
But throw in the terrible economies and wars and such and it all looks pretty damned bad. And who’s to say that the world isn’t already IN an apocalypse either?!
I am hoping for an apocalypse. Let’s get on with it.
While it provides more than enough reasons to be very concerned, I sincerely hope that this does NOT HAPPEN….
Check out this video called” December 21, 2012 – Two Suns in the Sky”
on YouTube:
http://youtu.be/d70HG9V3yxs
The world’s been ending since the beginning of time.
We’re all gonna die too.
sfw
Revolution sounds like a ( liberul ) idea or osama’s wet dream!
Have a nice day.
I’m betting on some kind of vicious, mutated, Hybrid strand of teeth-nashing Rabies with Ebola-like tendencies that drip with the juices of liquified organs from every oriface, sweeps from the Cities outwards.. Escape routes, fortified shelters, accessibility to food, medical supplies, clean water, transportation, strategies for attack/defense/hold positions and with as much creativity as you wish.. Weapons.