Thread by @leashless

To survive, we have to replace the imagined future apocalypse with something else, and then move towards that.

It has to replace our default pattern, which seems to be to bring the world to Apocalypse.

We have to end linear time. No more "and then the game stops" cultural maps.

This sense, that time runs *until the End of Days* and then stops?

It's simply an error but its one which is baked into the European Christian base map. That culture is dominated by apocalyptic mythology. You wonder why they were first to nuclear weapons? Biblical archetypes.

To fix the world you'd have to pull out that base map.

"The game goes on indefinitely and we leave the board in good condition for future players" has to replace any notion of an apocalyptic end.

Could such a shift in base map happen? Of course it could: history shows us that.

The closest similar change of base map might be the end of the divine right of kings, or perhaps votes and other rights for women.

The base map is flexible. Right effort can change it.

It's a question of concerted effort, leverage, and time. And we started decades ago.

I feel like all the people who've unconsciously bought this apocalyptic base map are going to be pretty wounded and disenfranchised when it turns out that time isn't marching towards an Apocalypse, and in fact life just goes on... and on... and on.

Let's hope we see that day.

I think the "get yours before the nuclear bombs start raining down" mindset might actually be our secret enemy in the fight to preserve natural systems: maybe the older Duck and Cover generation are fairly sure these long term considerations don't really matter

Deep nuclear fear

After all, if you were born in 1950, your whole childhood was dominated by the nuclear bomb. Nobody really talks about this stuff any more, but imagine being the first generation of children to absorb the Hydrogen Bomb as the key discovery of your age, the defining new reality.

and that interaction, between the Apocalyptic base map of European Christianity and the newfound practical reality of the atom bomb - how could confused children's minds make sense of the nuclear reality other than through the implicit lens of religion?

Biden was born in 1942.

Imagine the confused mishmash inside of Biden's head, the place where a child trying to understand the world sees constant images of hydrogen bombs and the Soviet threat on the news? This, in an explicitly Christian household.

What hope for reason in such a head? What *room*?