Growing up with the apocalypse
Sept 23, 2016 11:02:42 GMT
Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2016 11:02:42 GMT
The other day I was reflecting on the fact that my generation was the first one to grow up with the concept that somebody could actually end the world by pushing on a red button. While people from earlier times had no lack of things to worry about, this was not among them in the old days. For them, there could be devastating wars or terrible epidemics, but the world would not end. It might even be possible to run off to Australia or South Africa to escape harm. Starting from the 1950's when the Soviet Union had developed its own atomic bomb, all of this changed. For people who lived in the United States, it seemed that death had arrived on their doorstep after the revolution in Cuba when, as was so often the case, the U.S. did the exact opposite of what it should have done. It spurned Castro who was reaching out to America and pushed him into the arms the Soviet Union instead.
By then I was in school, and we learned all about radiation poisoning and did our nuclear attack drills from time to time, since crouching under your desk was supposed to protect you. Any public building with a basement or even just a big windowless room because a designated fallout shelter stocked with water and rations for... how many people? How long? Nobody ever really told us this. We just assumed that we would die anyway, even us kids, because the description of fallout and the horrible black bruises that would appear on our skin just before our teeth and hair fell out really made us kind of hope that it would all end quickly. My father subscribed to Popular Mechanics magazine which had blueprints for building a personal fallout shelter in the back yard with specifications for fans and filters, a new fangled battery operated transistor radio and don't forget the board games and books for the kids. You might be there for awhile (as you watch the black bruises spreading across your body and your teeth and hair fall out).
Then there was the literature and movies and television shows. Nevil Shute's On the Beach or Twilight Zone episodes in which lone survivors emerge from a mine or a bank vault and find that the entire world has been destroyed outside. I was too young to really notice how the adults around me were dealing with this, except that I remember my mother telling one or two "end-of-the-world" dreams that she had. She probably should have kept her mouth shut but I know that for one of the dreams she was so haunted by what she had just gone through that she told us all about it at the breakfast table, and I still remember her description of what happened almost sixty years later, including the paint melting off the door frame.
Well, all of these years have gone by, and the world has not ended yet. But I'm wondering if the concept has changed anything about the way we view life compared to earlier generations. Religion is on the rise in various parts of the world, generally in reaction to a perceived threat from other cultures. And religion has declined in other places because... why? Because it won't save us? Because we have outgrown it? Because we are too busy watching television or playing video games? I really don't know. I know that for some reason, all of the gesticulations by and about North Korea have no effect on me. I've heard it all before and nothing happened, and nobody can convince me that anybody anywhere would ever be crazy enough to "push the red button" and end the world. But other people seem to worry quite a lot. There is a whole new generation what was born after the Cold War. In the West, they seem generally optimistic about the future even though there are all sorts of problems like unemployment and never being able to retire. In other areas, young people are blowing themselves up and trying to kill as many people as possible at the same time. Why? Do they think they are foot soldiers in a new world war? Have they really lost all reason to live? Have their brains been stuffed with so much propaganda that they don't even know what they are doing? Is their faith in their religion so immense that they really believe that they are going to heaven immediately by doing such a thing? I do not have the cultural tools to try to answer such questions, but I have seen really a huge number of politicians and "political analysts" spouting off on the subject as though they understand exactly what is happening. If all of this were so easy to figure out and explain, would the world be in the shape it is today?
Anyway, I'm just rambling in the hope that other people have some ideas about this. I am pretty sure that I will live out what remains of my life without the apocalypse or something that looks too much like it, but I might be dreadfully wrong. Dinner is not finished yet, and I saw that the population bomb, global warming and world famine are all on the menu and they are all linked to each other, so if you get one of them, you basically get them all. There are no simple solutions, and the people who say they know what will happen are wrong.
Once upon a time, in 1969, for example, it was possible to put men on the moon using a computer as powerful as a pocket calculator. What happened to that sort of ambition and determination?
By then I was in school, and we learned all about radiation poisoning and did our nuclear attack drills from time to time, since crouching under your desk was supposed to protect you. Any public building with a basement or even just a big windowless room because a designated fallout shelter stocked with water and rations for... how many people? How long? Nobody ever really told us this. We just assumed that we would die anyway, even us kids, because the description of fallout and the horrible black bruises that would appear on our skin just before our teeth and hair fell out really made us kind of hope that it would all end quickly. My father subscribed to Popular Mechanics magazine which had blueprints for building a personal fallout shelter in the back yard with specifications for fans and filters, a new fangled battery operated transistor radio and don't forget the board games and books for the kids. You might be there for awhile (as you watch the black bruises spreading across your body and your teeth and hair fall out).
Then there was the literature and movies and television shows. Nevil Shute's On the Beach or Twilight Zone episodes in which lone survivors emerge from a mine or a bank vault and find that the entire world has been destroyed outside. I was too young to really notice how the adults around me were dealing with this, except that I remember my mother telling one or two "end-of-the-world" dreams that she had. She probably should have kept her mouth shut but I know that for one of the dreams she was so haunted by what she had just gone through that she told us all about it at the breakfast table, and I still remember her description of what happened almost sixty years later, including the paint melting off the door frame.
Well, all of these years have gone by, and the world has not ended yet. But I'm wondering if the concept has changed anything about the way we view life compared to earlier generations. Religion is on the rise in various parts of the world, generally in reaction to a perceived threat from other cultures. And religion has declined in other places because... why? Because it won't save us? Because we have outgrown it? Because we are too busy watching television or playing video games? I really don't know. I know that for some reason, all of the gesticulations by and about North Korea have no effect on me. I've heard it all before and nothing happened, and nobody can convince me that anybody anywhere would ever be crazy enough to "push the red button" and end the world. But other people seem to worry quite a lot. There is a whole new generation what was born after the Cold War. In the West, they seem generally optimistic about the future even though there are all sorts of problems like unemployment and never being able to retire. In other areas, young people are blowing themselves up and trying to kill as many people as possible at the same time. Why? Do they think they are foot soldiers in a new world war? Have they really lost all reason to live? Have their brains been stuffed with so much propaganda that they don't even know what they are doing? Is their faith in their religion so immense that they really believe that they are going to heaven immediately by doing such a thing? I do not have the cultural tools to try to answer such questions, but I have seen really a huge number of politicians and "political analysts" spouting off on the subject as though they understand exactly what is happening. If all of this were so easy to figure out and explain, would the world be in the shape it is today?
Anyway, I'm just rambling in the hope that other people have some ideas about this. I am pretty sure that I will live out what remains of my life without the apocalypse or something that looks too much like it, but I might be dreadfully wrong. Dinner is not finished yet, and I saw that the population bomb, global warming and world famine are all on the menu and they are all linked to each other, so if you get one of them, you basically get them all. There are no simple solutions, and the people who say they know what will happen are wrong.
Once upon a time, in 1969, for example, it was possible to put men on the moon using a computer as powerful as a pocket calculator. What happened to that sort of ambition and determination?
