Musings on our cultural obsession with apocalypses

I'd like to take a break from talking about WoW to talk about something I have been musing over for some time now: namely, our culture's seeming obsession with the idea of the apocalypse. Now, when I say apocalypse, I don't necessarily mean the end of the world (though I don't preclude that definition, either); I just mean a catastrophic event that has the potential to wipe out the human race. The movie 2012 is an example of this obsession, for it is based on the idea of the Mayan apocalypse, an idea which is well-known in our culture and still believed by many (even though a bit of research shows that the traditional Mayan beliefs don't include 2012 being the end of the world). The idea of a zombie apocalypse also seems to have pervaded our culture, not only in the form of media portraying such an event, but in an obsession with the idea. We have Max Brooks' books on the topic, Humans vs. Zombies roleplay events (one of which happened at my college recently), as well as countless movies showing survivors of such a catastrophe. These are two such examples of ways the world could end that seem to have become quite popular in our culture.

It seems appropriate for me to discuss this obsession now, considering that Cataclysm will be a catastrophe of similar proportions for Azeroth. In all of the excitement for Cataclysm, what we seem to forget is that the Cataclysm will indeed be a catastrophe. The world is going to be destroyed, people's lives will be torn apart, and thousands will likely die. Of course, this doesn't concern us players (as Dark Legacy Comics showed so well); in the end, we only care about the fact that it's going to happen. This shows a disturbing parallel to our views toward a real apocalypse, which we as a culture view in a romantic light without stopping to consider the fact that many people would die if such a thing were to happen. We fantasize about a zombie apocalypse without considering the fact that we would likely be one of the walking dead. We joke about robots taking over without realizing that we probably wouldn't be one of the chosen few who save humanity; we would probably be no more than a corpse once it started.

This romanticism surrounding the idea of most of the population being wiped out has always concerned me a bit, but it's only recently that I began to really give it some thought. I think it's origins may be biological. You see, if you take a population of organisms without higher brain functions like us humans and give them all that they need to survive (food, water, shelter, etc.), they will spend all of their time procreating. This will continue until the population surpasses a sustainable size, meaning the members of the population will continue to reproduce until there isn't enough food/water/shelter to support so many offspring, at which point ecology kicks in and kills off members of the population until it is back at a sustainable size.

We humans (at least, those of us in cultures that fantasizes about apocalypses) are in a similar scenario to what I described above. Those of us who are lucky enough to live in a well-off part of society (and if you are reading this blog, I assume you are one of those lucky individuals) don't need to worry about the typical needs of survival: if we want food, we go to the supermarket; if we want water, we turn the faucets on our sink; if we want shelter, we just go back to our house/apartment/dorm. The basic needs of our survival are all met, and we know this, so biologically, our instinct should be to procreate as much as possible. Though you can argue that this does happen, considering how rampant of a problem overpopulation has become, I'm sure most people don't keep breeding once they have what they think of as a reasonable number of children (though the number that is considered "reasonable" varies from person to person).

Considering all of this, we humans are in a unique position, biologically. We are privileged to have all of our basic needs met, and yet we choose not procreate with abandon. We are actively going against our biological instincts, living in a sort of biological equilibrium. What does this have to do with our obsession with the apocalypse? Well, as any biologist will tell you, the only time when our cells are at equilibrium is when we are dead, and that if they do reach true equilibrium, we die (don't ask me how it happens; my major is math, not biology). I would imagine that the same is true on a larger scale; if our lives reach true equilibrium, then we will wish to die.

This may seem like a ludicrous idea, but in practice, it isn't that absurd. Suicide rates are higher among the upper class than among the lower class, and who is living in a state of greater equilibrium? Who doesn't have to work as hard just to live? The idea that it is bad if our lives reach equilibrium can also be seen in the ways that celebrities and people who are generally well off ruin their lives, ways which leave us common folk asking, "How could they have done that when they had it all?" They may have done it precisely because they had it all. Their lives were in equilibrium, and they needed to do something to change that, so they cheat on their marriages or go into petty crime.

To bring this all back to our obsession with the idea of the apocalypse, those of us in the middle and upper class are in a state of biological equilibrium. We don't need to fight for food, water, shelter, or other such things, and yet we aren't breeding ceaselessly to attempt to bring that equilibrium to an end. If our cells die when they reach equilibrium, then I think our obsession with apocalypses arises out of the fact that we have, as a culture, have reached a state of equilibrium. Thus the culture itself is, in a way, ready to die, and what is an apocalypse other than a massive wiping-out of people? We are like so many cells in a body that has reached equilibrium, a state which is not compatible with life, and we desire something to break that equilibrium. If outside forces don't break that equilibrium for us, then our biological desire is to do it ourselves, yet most of us aren't willing to take such drastic measures as ending our own life. That's why we fantasize about the apocalypse, for it would do it for us.

It's a pretty heavy conclusion, I know, but what is more important than the idea is the lessons we take away from it. What lessons can we take away from the fact that our obsession with the apocalypse may be a sign that our culture is ready to self-destruct? We can learn to realize that problems, issues, and suffering in general will always be a part of our lives, for if our lives were truly free of worry and hardship, we wouldn't be able to live. After all, a life without worry or hardship is a life in equilibrium, and thus a life that cannot be lived.