The world must go through hell before we get to heaven

I’ve quoted a few times from the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact. When I do I say I’m 6½ years behind in my reading. I was so far behind I stopped buying it in early 2015. I have two issues of that era yet to read. I’ve already started buying it again and getting used to a new publishing schedule. I say I’m behind in reading to explain why I just finished the December 2014 issue. The guest editorial in that issue is by Howard V. Hendrix, an author who I don’t recognize and the magazine doesn’t introduce. I checked online and see Hendrix has 14 books readily available. I haven’t read any of them. The title for his editorial is A Choice of Apocalypses. He noted some apocalyptic literature – such as the books of Daniel and Revelation in the Bible and Milton’s Paradise Lost – and also talked about what these have in common. He wrote these stories of End Times have these suppositions:

1) Although the powers of the world arrayed against us (and even civilization worldwide) may be swept away, we’ll still be alive for further adventures, and 2) No matter what things are like after the End (whether nasty, brutish, and short on a blasted Earth, or blissful, beautiful, and benign in a millennial paradise), the situation for we few, we happy few, will at least be much simpler and more direct – possessed of a far fewer frustrating niceties than life in an advanced and complex human society. This odd entangling of ideas – that the world has to go through hell before we get to heaven – is embedded in the word ‘apocalypse’ itself.

Hendrix then explained that the roots of that word mean both ‘to reveal’ and ‘to cover.’ What caught my attention in that section was the world must go through hell before we get to heaven. That’s close to saying we gain heaven after the world goes through hell – after we make the world go through hell. The sooner we make the world go through hell the sooner we will get to heaven. Another aspect of that is they won’t be around. They didn’t make it through hell. Which is why we want the world to go through hell. The Christian fundamentalist idea of the Rapture is exactly that, the favored people are taken up to heaven as the world goes to hell. Sarah Kendzior has reminded us that several top people in the nasty guy administration, notably Mike Pompeo, believe in the Rapture and created national and foreign policy around fulfilling the signs that indicate the Rapture will soon happen. Many of those signs focus on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem where a couple months ago Israeli police entered a Muslim Mosque to cause trouble. This apocalyptic description also fits the American and world hyper rich. Even though Leah McElrath recently said no place is safe the rich believe they will be spared in their OligArks and after the rest of us are washed out into the rising sea they can rule the world free of the rabble (or at least have a lot less rabble making the job of ruling them easier). That means the rich are doing nothing about climate change because they are following the apocalyptic literature – the world will go through hell and we will get to heaven. That’s what we’re up against. Later in the editorial Hendrix wrote about modern versions of apocalyptic scenarios. One of them is the Singularity described by Ray Kurzweil. I’ll let you explore that one on your own, though it may be much more community minded than what the older scenarios portray. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that 58 Texas House Democrats have left the state to prevent a quorum for passing voter suppression laws. Yeah, they denied a quorum at the end of the regular session, which is why the governor called this special session. The law is that if the governor has called a special session (which this is) and a lawmaker is in the state they can be arrested and taken to the Capitol. So they boarded chartered buses and planes. The session is expected to last at least into August, so they’ll be gone a while. Where most of them are going is also important. They are heading to Washington DC to lobby the Democrats in Congress, saying they have not done enough to protect the right to vote. They may even sit on the Capitol steps, forcing the members of Congress to walk through them. Their departure came after the public comment on the proposed suppression laws. That commenting took 17 hours. Yes, that means some did not stick it out and were not heard. Sherrilyn Ifill tweeted:

17 hours. The only wait time longer than standing in line to vote in Black precincts is the wait time to testify against voter suppression bills that will make waiting in line to vote even longer.