“Isn’t it always the end of the world?” asks Emily St. John Mandel in her excellent novel Sea of Tranquility.
A post from Australian theologian
got my attention recently. He seemed to visualize that visceral sense of alarm many are living with right now. (Some call it an apocalypse but we’re getting ahead of ourselves)And one more drop in the bucket: today a NBC News poll showed Trump leading Biden (46/44) nationally for the first time.
There’s a word for this: poly-crisis.
I found President Biden pretty helpful here. He made this brilliant off-hand remark recently,
there comes a time, maybe every six to eight generations, where the world changes in a very short time. And I think what happens in the next two, three years are going to determine what the world looks like for the next five or six decades.
Many crises, connected in all sorts of disparate, infinitely complex ways. The nature of a poly-crisis rejects a singular, clear cut explanation. And we experience a poly-crisis as a transitional (or liminal) moment of time—like that weird nebulous between getting off the plane and through customs.
Liminal moments, in the market of power, are always a time to buy, to shape, to exploit.
Like Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who “prefers the Christianity of the emperor Constantine to the Christianity of Mother Teresa”, and told The Atlantic he’s taking a break from democracy.
There’s piracy in the poly-crisis too, from rogue states like Russia or North Korea or rogue movements like Hamas.
Then, there are mid to low-level outrage entrepreneurs (a word I read somewhere and if you know who said this please let me know). The poly-crisis serves up a lot of content, and a lot of profit, if you’re willing to do the work of greasing the outrage machine. Many of us are buyers on this market, returning to social media day in and out for our outrage fix.
And don’t hear what I’m not saying: there is more than enough to be angry about, to be outraged over. I’m not questioning the legitimacy or validity of anger at atrocities and injustice. I’m questioning its place as the primary, forming posture of our spirit.
The poly-crisis we’re facing is an absurdity. It’s the crisis that can only befall people like us who have more information than any moment in human history, but share in its darkness all the same.
Albert Camus talks about experiencing the absurd.
It happens when the stage sets collapse: wake up, commute, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday—according to the same rhythm — this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the "why" arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
Early 21st century people aren’t awakened to the absurd, we’re burdened by it. It’s everywhere. The scale of information simply overwhelms our strategies to obscure it.
Which brings me back to where we started: apocalypse. The word doesn’t mean “end of the world” — but simply disclosure or revelation or unveiling.
Today, we live in a moment of all sorts of mini-apocalypses—unveiling one crisis after the next, all incalculably connected in such a complex web of absurd contingencies that defy categories and rationality.
As a theologian, far from wanting to exploit this moment, I do want to take it seriously. As James K.A. Smith points out, a great deal of what we say and how we live depends on when we are (the times we live in).
In Christian theology, apocalypse has less to do with the space/time dimension of the edge of the world and the end of the world, and more to do with the beginning of the world begun by Jesus Christ. But history often tells the exact opposite when you look at how the Church has lived.
And yet there are still moments of witness that are compelling. And to that I think Augustine has something to say. On a sermon on prayer, with the fall of Rome going on around him, Augustine pronounced something timeless…
“Bad times, hard times!” That is what everyone keeps saying. But let us live well and the times shall be well. We are the times. Such as we are, such are the times.”
The absurdity of a poly-crisis shouldn’t be the reason we give up our responsibility to live. And as Christians, it shouldn’t rob us of the responsibility to consider Jesus again as the meaning and measure of all things, including the time we are given.
Hi, Jared. Are you familiar with Generational Theory by Strauss and Howe? I've found it very helpful as a framework to understand the times we're living through.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generational_theory
Every 80 years, going back 500+ years the West/US faces a major crisis period of many years.
Today--->the great depression through WW2---->American Civil War----->American Revolution---->the glorious revolution----->Armada crisis------>War of the Roses
There are no guarantees the pattern holds, but this framework allows me to realize 1) things could be challenging for a while and also 2) things will almost certainly, eventually change/improve
Happy Thanksgiving:)
B