Consider this blog a premeditatio malorum. That’s what the ancient Stoics called it. In the Handbook (Enchiridion), Epictetus says, “Let death and exile and every other thing which appears dreadful be daily before your eyes; but most of all death: and you will never think of anything mean nor will you desire anything extravagantly.” This is an earlier version of the samurai technique employed by Roy Scranton in Iraq. Philosopher William Irvine terms it “negative visualization.” If we imagine the worst things that could happen, he writes, “we will lessen their impact on us when, despite our efforts at prevention, they happen.” Doing so will also make us appreciate what we have, like “antibiotics, air conditioning, toilet paper(!), cell phones, television, windows, eyeglasses, and fresh fruit in January.” Those are, of course, things most people don’t have and that probably will become rare by the 2040s, if the geophysicists, epidemiologists, and many economists are correct.
Misfortunes feel greater to those who have depended upon good fortune – who often indulge in denial when confronted with the former. Until they can’t. But if the scientists really are full of hooey, the premeditatio will only make us more resilient in confronting the difficulties life does throw our way, like when the air conditioning breaks down or we can’t get cell phone reception (or – horrors – both! So we can’t call the A/C repair people). Perhaps this is why dystopian fiction has experienced such a boom in recent years, esp. among the young. Those in their teens and twenties know what’s in store for them – perhaps better than their parents do (or are willing to admit). Climate catastrophe and either anarchy*, fascism, or both. They want to feel it, to see it – maybe out of idle speculation and curiosity, maybe to get ready. It might make them hold up better when the SHTF. * i.e., sheer social chaos - as opposed to anarchism, which is a political theory about self-regulating communities.
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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. |