{"id":121042,"date":"2018-10-29T12:01:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T12:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=121042"},"modified":"2018-10-28T11:44:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T11:44:34","slug":"the-apocalypse-not-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/10\/the-apocalypse-not-now\/","title":{"rendered":"The Apocalypse Not Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

27 Oct 2018 – <\/em>It was balmy and breezy by the bench where I sat outside a public library east of Atlanta, Georgia, brooding about the state of the world.\u00a0 It seemed like the end times, and I had just attended a fire and brimstone sermon, not perused the mainstream and alternative press. I had just spent a few hours on the internet, noting so many articles that announced that the world as we know it was coming to an end, or maybe just the world.\u00a0 The American Empire was collapsing, the U.S.A. was a failed state, climate change would soon destroy the world if nuclear war didn\u2019t do it first, etc.\u00a0 Many of these articles were predicting that soon the elites who run the U.S. would be getting their comeuppance because of hubris and overreach and, like the Roman Empire, the die had been cast and disaster was on the horizon.\u00a0 Such prognostications were appearing in publications that covered the political spectrum.\u00a0 All of it was fear-inducing, notwithstanding one\u2019s political beliefs.\u00a0 Left, right, and center had reasons to be depressed or elated by the claims, depending on one\u2019s politics and existential reality.\u00a0 And, need I surmise, the writers of these jeremiads were probably writing from a position of personal privilege, not scrounging for their next meal.<\/p>\n

And it was a beautiful mid-October day.\u00a0 The benches by the adjacent church were full of homeless people, their meagre belongings arrayed at their feet.\u00a0 The susurrant sound of the leaves of the sycamore tree that formed a sacred canopy above me was lulling me to sleep.\u00a0 In my half-asleep state, I, a northerner, was dreaming I was a Georgian civilian hiding behind the enemy\u2019s lines, those lines being General Sherman\u2019s Union Army\u2019s artillery that was arrayed a few miles to my west and was shelling Atlanta.\u00a0 And in this reverie I was also aware that, as I wouldn\u2019t have been in 1864, that Sherman would soon leave Atlanta and lead his troops on the savage \u201cmarch to the sea\u201d that would earn him the appellation as the American father of total warfare that would become America\u2019s tactic from World War I until the present day, a form of warfare that has brought apocalyptic death and destruction to millions around the globe.\u00a0 Lost and frightened in this half-dreaming state with my eyes closed, I was startled by a thud and dim awareness of a shadow to my left.<\/p>\n

Awakening, I saw that a homeless man had sat next to me. We said hello.\u00a0 \u201cSorry to give you a fright,\u201d he said, \u201cbut all the benches by the church are taken.\u201d\u00a0 We got to talking.\u00a0 He told me that he had been homeless for almost two years, that he had originally been from Indiana, where he had graduated from the University of Indiana, and that when he was laid off he was unable to pay his mortgage and had lost his small house.\u00a0 He looked to be in his late thirties, with a scruffy beard and a very tired face.\u00a0 His name was Paul.<\/p>\n

Among his tattered belongings, I was surprised to see an old paperback copy of a book sticking out of a side pocket of one of his bags. \u00a0I knew the title \u2013 Raids on the Unspeakable<\/em> \u2013 by the anti-war Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, who died in a very mysterious manner in Bangkok, Thailand fifty years ago this December 10.\u00a0 Merton\u2019s death was the third that year of prominent and influential anti-war fighters:\u00a0 Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy having earlier been assassinated by forces of the American national security state.\u00a0 Nineteen sixty-eight had been a very bad year for peace and peace-makers.\u00a0 It was a year of endless war and strife, a time when everything seemed to be collapsing.\u00a0 And here we are.<\/p>\n

Paul told me he had picked the book out of a box of books that had been set out for garbage pickup.\u00a0 He said he had read a few of the essays and one in particular had struck him.\u00a0 It is called \u201cRain and the Rhinoceros.\u201d\u00a0 I knew and loved the essay and was startled by the serendipity of our meeting.\u00a0 He said the reason the essay struck home to him was because he had grown up on a farm in Indiana and had spent much of his youth outdoors.\u00a0 He loved the natural world, and his mother and grandmother had early introduced him to the \u201cHoosier Poet,\u201d James Whitcomb Reilly, whose poems he had memorized.\u00a0 He proceeded to recite a stanza from one of them for me, as I, mesmerized, watched his expressive face light up.<\/p>\n

Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! When I last saw the place, <\/em>
\nThe scenes was all changed, like the change in my face; <\/em>
\nThe bridge of the railroad now crosses the spot <\/em>
\nWhare the old divin’-log lays sunk and fergot. <\/em>
\nAnd I stray down the banks whare the trees ust to be\u2014 <\/em>
\nBut never again will theyr shade shelter me! <\/em>
\nAnd I wish in my sorrow I could strip to the soul, <\/em>
\nAnd dive off in my grave like the old swimmin’-hole <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then his face grew dark again, tired and forlorn.\u00a0 He said that when he lost his home, the last piece of mail he opened was his water bill, and it was sky high.\u00a0 He thought it appropriate that since he couldn\u2019t afford a home, he couldn\u2019t afford water, the water of life that should be free.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what so resonated for him in the Merton essay.\u00a0 Merton\u2019s opening paragraph, which he opened to show me, goes like this:<\/p>\n

Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By “they” I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWhen they will sell you even your rain,\u201d he said sadly.\u00a0 \u201cThey sold me a bill of goods.\u00a0 The American dream!\u00a0 What a bad joke, here I am, a college graduate, not a drunk or drug addict, and I\u2019m living in a tent in the woods in a ravine by a golf course.\u00a0 Some nights I think they make it rain on me for fun, as if to say: here\u2019s your free water, you loser.\u201d<\/p>\n

He asked about me, and I told him who I was and why I was there.\u00a0 I mentioned the end-of-the-world articles I had been reading earlier, realizing as I did that I was saying a dumb thing to this this poor guy whose world was in tatters already.<\/p>\n

Then he taught me this, as if he were Socrates asking questions.\u00a0 I paraphrase:<\/p>\n

If you were Merton\u2019s \u201cthey,\u201d those who rule the American Empire and your oppressed subjects were restless and awakening to their plight, what message would you want to convey to keep the peons from rebelling?\u00a0 What strategies, short of direct violence, would be most effective in rendering even the relatively well-off middle class passive and docile?\u00a0 What, in other words, is the most effective form of social control, outside economic exploitation and fear of penury, in a putative democracy when all the controlling institutions have lost the trust of most of the population?<\/p>\n

Then, without skipping a beat, he answered his own questions.\u00a0 You would, he said, tell them that the sky is falling, the empire is collapsing, that the rich rulers are going to get theirs when the system collapses on itself and that this is in the process of happening right now.\u00a0 So sit back and watch the show as it closes down.\u00a0 The end is near.<\/p>\n

Then he said he had to go.\u00a0 Lunch was being served at the nearby soup kitchen and if you didn\u2019t get there early, they sometimes ran out of food.<\/p>\n

As he walked away, I thought of my vast ignorance and the society of illusions and delusions that I was living in, a constant streaming theater of the absurd. \u00a0I wanted to cry for this man and all people, even myself, as he disappeared around the corner.\u00a0 He seemed to carry his loneliness in the old backpack that weighed him down.\u00a0 As he turned the corner, he looked back and waved, a smile on his face.\u00a0 I felt overcome, and when I recovered my bearings, I noticed he had left the book on the bench.\u00a0 But by then he was long gone.\u00a0 I opened it to a page that was dog-eared, and read these words of Merton, another solitary man in the woods, his solitude a choice, not, like Paul, an imposed necessity, at least the living arrangement part:<\/p>\n

It is in the desert of loneliness and emptiness that the fear of death and the need for self-affirmation are seen to be illusory. When this is faced, then anguish is not necessarily overcome, but it can be accepted and understood. Thus, in the heart of anguish are found the gifts of peace and understanding: not simply in personal illumination and liberation, but by commitment and empathy, for the contemplative must assume the universal anguish and the inescapable condition of mortal man. The solitary, far from enclosing himself in himself, becomes every man. He dwells in the solitude, the poverty, the indigence of every man.<\/p>\n

Next to this paragraph was the word \u201cPaul,\u201d written in blue ink.<\/p>\n

It was such an achingly beautiful day.\u00a0 I got up and left the book on the bench, as I too walked away, after writing \u201cEd\u201d in black ink next to Paul\u2019s blue.<\/p>\n

We are all bruised, aren\u2019t we?\u00a0 But often times those bruised the most have the most to give.<\/p>\n

This is Paul\u2019s gift.<\/p>\n

__________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a> and teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhen they will sell you even your rain,\u201d he said sadly. \u201cThey sold me a bill of goods. The American dream! What a bad joke, here I am, a college graduate, not a drunk or drug addict, and I\u2019m living in a tent in the woods in a ravine by a golf course. Some nights I think they make it rain on me for fun, as if to say: here\u2019s your free water, you loser.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":108249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}