NOTE: It’s been quite a while since I posted something. I’ve been struggling with a depressive episode and unemployment, and have found little time or energy to devote to the next section, “Capitalist Realism, Coloniality, and the Anthropocene”. It’s going to require a lot of work and will be a significantly longer post due to how essential each of these three subjects are to the project as a whole. I found new enthusiasm, however, in the past week or so: I decided I’m going to apply to Drew University’s Theology PhD program to hopefully study with Catherine Keller (a favorite scholar and theologian), who I met with briefly over Zoom recently; and, very happily, I discovered I was accepted into Rosi Braidotti’s course on “The Posthuman and New Materialism” which I will be participating in in August. To the point: I just started transcribing thoughts and came up with this post below. While it is not necessarily the subject of any specific section in IGF, it does have relevant ideas to the work as a whole, particularly in relationship to my reading of apocalypse (heavily influenced by both Keller and Braidotti), the relationship between politics and spirituality, the current paradigm shift, and (though not mentioned by name) Spinoza’s concept of Deus sive Natura (God or Nature). I hope you enjoy!
I’m on the verge of a breakthrough—a conclusion and a new beginning. I have been obsessed with the apocalypse for a very long time, such a miniscule amount of time when measured by the clicking second hand of the clock, such an infinitesimal pool of time when relativized and allowed to be a microcosm of eternity. That there are some infinities bigger than other eternities is not, at its most, a mere quantitative determination; rather, it is qualitative. An intensity of energy that is affective and felt, a magnanimity of contrasts and complexity. To feel in a broader way, to enter into union with the grandest and subtlest of sensations, to know the full breadth of the beginning and the end and yet to live engulfed in its infernal and cosmic procession—this is the infinite that I am speaking of, the unveiling of apokalypsis.
Each life is an expression of this Life, this fullness of the unfurling, entwined and entwining, deepening universe. As creatures endowed with a life force, we can live in isolated cubicles of this cosmic dance, pressing keys and filling out paperwork, detached from the sheer audacity of a vibrant, rhythmic eternity. Under the watch of the clicking second hand, the domineering boss, the voice of a repressive mommy and daddy, we may lose the sense of childlike wonder that makes being fresh to Life—not just our life—so enthralling and creative. And in that lost sense, we may even—in fact, we most certainly do—diminish the intensity, passion, and beauty of our own life. The initiation of adulthood, particularly in a disenchanted, mechanistic, and capitalistic paradigm, is one which is either bent on violently destroying the intuitive and imaginative capacities of a fresh and childlike mind, or, perhaps even worse, commodifying and exploiting those capacities for the soulless and lifeless demands of the market. In the end, they serve the same purpose: to divorce our life from Life itself.
For the longest time, I have considered the apocalypse to not just be a future happening, a moment in historical time in which all people are synchronously forced to meet their Maker. Rather, I view apokalypsis as the unveiling of one’s life as an expression of Life—a microcosm of the infinite and thus a manifestation of infinity itself. Everyone who has lived a life will at some point confront this, not once and finally, but perpetually and in process. It is the relationship of the part to the whole, the many to the one, the vine to the branch. It is the confrontation and dialogue with death that inspires the vibrant living out of a lifelong communion with Life. It is the spirit of childlike wonder and sense of adventure that is so natural to the fresh mind, a mind ever in need of refreshment, continually requiring the wetting of the tongue and the rehydration of the body. That many children are robbed of this state of bliss through violence and trauma does not disprove its primordial truth; instead, it suggests the deep need to battle against these forces of traumatizing violence and to instate sources of healing and reconciliation for our hurt and damaged communities. This requires a confrontation not only with personal suffering, but collective, historical, geopolitical, planetary, and, ultimately, spiritual suffering. Apokalypsis is an initiation in and through these spheres of existential belonging—not the arrival of a messianic figure in some distant future, but an encounter with Life here and now—a meeting between us and the infinitudes that compose our We.
We can see how the awaiting of such a messianic figure has done undue damage to our shared world and to the interconnected webs of Life. By prefiguring the annihilation of this world in favor of another, transcendent, heavenly realm, We lose track of the Life that pervades Our planetary (and thus necessarily both cosmic and collective) existence. That We have been taught by what I will call the Genocidal Paradigm that some of Us will experience eternity as Heaven and some of Us as Hell (and that the latter will compose the vast majority of Us, not to mention those of Us who are considered sub, non, or in -human) is a fundamental example of a dualistic drive to create “thems”, “others”, and “outsiders” in a process of demonization, damnation, and annihilation. That We are Life and that that We is a plural, a multiple, a unity only in its complexity of shared, valued, and nurtured difference is not the message of the Genocidal Paradigm. What We have instead is a worldview that first views the Earth and its creatures (also part of Our We) as something to be dominated rather than cared for as stewards. This is the foundational aspect of the theology of dominion, which is deeply tied to the theologies of patriarchy, racism, anthropocentrism, and capitalism, all of which intersect and compound on each other to form what has been called kyriarchy. That We are Life—or rather, that the Life that holds together everything—from different human cultures to other fauna and flora and minerals and chemicals and elements, roots and rocks and people and places and things, the planet and the cosmos and cities and communities and spiritual beings—that that Life is what composes the We that We are. To experience such is to experience apokalypsis.
Eternity then is not something out there per se, but instead something to be discovered within oneself, within one’s life. Of course, the experience of the out there is almost certainly a key aspect of realizing the deep intertwinement of Life, but without the excavation of the mucky and messy terrain of Our innerworlds, We will never find the point in which our creative and imaginative self-purpose relates to the greater story of the Life that is both within and without. That this is inherently, but not solely, a spiritual task is something that I think could use more emphasis in our secular paradigm, which is perhaps reaching a post-secular threshold. Obviously the history of theology has served the Genocidal Paradigm for a very long time, driving an unconscionable wedge between self and other, this world and that, Us and “them”. To thus want to be rid of this theological legacy makes sense. However, I do not believe that this means We should give up the spiritual dimension of Our lives. Even in the tradition that has furthered the Genocidal Paradigm the most, that of Christianity, there is much to still be uncovered, revealed, and unveiled, such as the deep inner and outer journeys of the mystics and even the radical political and spiritual revolutionary ethos of Jesus of Nazareth (originally known as Yeshua). That mystics and revolutionaries have much to teach Us about this individual, who I believe truly embodied the non-dual and ethical living of one deeply in touch with Life, I think is becoming increasingly apparent to lives with a little bit of the mustard seed within.
Of course, it should be noted that We do not have to turn to the hidden and repressed aspects of Christianity to encounter Life. Any path will do, including that of atheism. The essential element is not which path We take necessarily, but instead whether or not it takes Us to the water, to refreshment, to renewed connection and revolutionary joy and radical bliss to be a life living as Life. For Life itself is the eternal, dancing companion that calls us to be a deeper, wider, and more refreshing We—a We that I believe is necessary if we are to face the Genocidal Paradigm and transition to a paradigm of lives living Life.
If this all sounds like New Age hoopla or crypto-Christian evangelizing, then I think it is in conclusion that I should admit (though probably not surprisingly) to being a romantic and an idealist. Given that, if anything sticks to your mind, skin, bones, organs, or spirit, I hope that it is the We calling out beyond the borders, the We that was here before and will be here long after You and I are gone. And along the way, I hope your journey in and through inevitable apokalypsis is one that brings you closer to Life, more in touch with the eternal We of this ever-unfolding Here-Now-and-Then-and-After, and more radically in tune with an orchestra of deep and abiding creation and imagination. Salutations, goodnight, and happy unveiling!
In Good Faith: a blog 