The writer Roy Scranton famously argued, in 2013, that we should regard our civilization as already dead. Or as good as. When he served in the US Army in Iraq, he got up each morning and imagined all the ways he could be killed that day (IED, ambush, accident, sniper, etc.). That way, as he puts it, he could consider himself “already dead”; this thought helped him go about his day in a combat zone. We ought, according to him, do the same with industrial civilization. Indeed, he sees the US turning into another version of Baghdad c. 2003 – or, as he points out, New Orleans, 2005. In his recent book, We’re Doomed. Now What? he invokes Nietzsche’s term amor fati, love of fate. Embrace what you have coming to you.
Neither Nietzsche nor Scranton invented these ideas; the latter cites a handbook for samurai warriors as being his inspiration. And Nietzsche coined amor fati to describe the attitude of the Stoics – i.e., desiring things to turn out the way they do, not the way you hope. But another of their practices is perhaps more to the point; it was called the premeditatio malorum – best translated as “meditation on adverse events.” If you imagine yourself dying, or a loved one being injured, or losing all your money, then you will be better-prepared if disaster befalls you. And disaster is befalling all of us. What would this practice mean, applied to an entire civilization – especially a global civilization? I remember riding out a fairly substantial earthquake once. My roommate expressed disappointment that it wasn’t the “Big One.” How come, I asked? “I kinda want to see civilization in ruins,” he replied. Or, as Guy Dubord remarked, “There is something within each man [sic] that delights to see a car burn.” Of course, this proleptic spectatorship assumes that you aren’t buried under the ruins. But imaginatively, we can – indeed, read Parable of the Sower, the MaddAddam trilogy, American War, Odds Against Tomorrow, or any number of other dystopian novels, and they’ll do it for you. So take a moment, and imagine your neighborhood in ruins: apartment buildings shelled-out skeletons, house roofs caved in, rubble everywhere. Trees starting to poke up through the roofs; vines starting to grow over them. You and a lot of other people are walking in the streets, looking for whatever fresh water you can find. Groups of young men are walking in the streets, carrying automatic weapons. It’s not that hard to envision, because it’s already happening in much of the world – including, perhaps, your own city. What will be different is that it will be happening to formerly-middle-class white people. Envisioning such scenarios are often seen as calls for action (“We only have 10 years to save the earth!”). But they are also a way to prepare oneself for what increasingly looks inevitable. Hopefully it won't be that bad, and we'll be pleasantly surprised. But what skills will you need? What will you be called upon to do? What ethical choices will you have to make? And what will the writers write about? On what? And for whom? Stoic philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “As if you had died and your life had extended only to this present moment, use the surplus that is left to you to live from this time onward according to nature.”* (7.56) In other words, act as though you’re already dead. You have realized what it was to be alive, now that you aren’t anymore; so you’ll appreciate the present more and take your actions more seriously. What would you write? Would you? ------ * “Live according to nature,” the Stoics’ motto, alluded to their belief that human beings are rational animals. They didn’t have neuroscience.
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |