Yes, the recent widespread belief that the Rapture was upon us was funny. It was easy to mock all those earnest people handing out literature explaining the “Ten Ways to Get to Heaven” or the “Good News” that the earth would be engulfed in Apocalypse. And of course stories like the one about the “post-rapture pet-sitting service,” a group of entrepeneurial atheists who got deposits from Believers to look after their pets in the event that their owners were raptured, were the source of hours of merriment among us sinners.
Then there were the philosophical debates, like whether the Rapture was also the Zombie Apocalypse since those who were raptured would leave their bodies behind? And even the pity, like for the people who spent their life savings or their kids’ college funds on getting the word out that the Apocalypse was upon us.
But now that the Rapture didn’t happen, it’s time to ask why this Apocalyptic vision was so important to us as a culture, not just to the Believers, but to the rest of us, those who consumed it with ironic distance and yet, still, were consumed by it. Perhaps the Rapture was so important to all of us because we all know, whether we admit it or not, that the End Days are here. Not in a religious sense, but in a “the earth cannot take anymore” sense.
The earthquake and then human made disaster in Japan was just the beginning. Record flooding in North America is enough to shake even the Koch brothers’ faith that global warming is a myth. A couple of days ago, the Mississippi River reached the historic height of 57.1 feet, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Where I live, Lake Champlain is also at record levels causing evacuations and untold damage to property and the environment on both sides of the U.S./Canadian border.
A new book by Kari Marie Norgaard, Living in Denial, asks how those of us who know that global warming is happening can continue to live as if it’s not. The answer is not an easy one. But part of the answer lies in the Rapture. We are afraid. We understand the enormity of the situation. But we feel overwhelmed and unsure of what to do. Should I really get rid of my car? Can’t I just take a long hot shower every other day? Will individual actions really make a difference when corporate polluters and the military are doing such colossal damage to the environment?
And so we do as a culture what we do as individuals: We project our fears onto something else, something that is not actually true but stands in for something that is. Like a haunted house or a horror film, the Rapture could stand in for something much worse: complete and total destruction of the environment through human actions. Now that the Rapture didn’t happen, but the water keeps rising and the news keeps getting worse, we’ll have to think up a new Apocalypse onto which we can project our fears rather than face the actual End Days caused by our own actions.
Thankfully, the Mayan calender ends next year.
