I found the article interesting until they brought up the Apple headquarters. It’s just an office building. Steve Jobs was obsessed with people walking around and bumping to each other. That’s why it’s a circle. The landscaping mimics the area around the Stanford dish where he liked to go on walks with people a talk through things. That’s it. Jony Ive brought the minimalist architecture. No greater meaning. These types of articles tend to lose their way when that try to attribute meaning to things that have no specific meaning.
It's sort of like how all those pseudo-intellectual literature professors and critics who are incapable of creating anything original waste their lives away trying to find deeper meaning in certain books. Often they end up fooling themselves by perceiving patterns in noise. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
There is no rapture coming. The idea of the rapture didn't even exist until Morgan Edwards came up with the idea in 1788. It didn't become popular until John Nelson Darby developed and popularized it starting around 1827-33 by conflating verses from different books of the Bible.
In Matthew 24:40-41 (also Matthew 13) it speaks of one being taken and one being left, but the people being taken are being destroyed by an invading army, like happened in Jerusalem in 70AD when the temple was destroyed. You want to be the one left behind. You also see this in Genesis when the people were taken away by the flood and they perished.
In 1st Thessalonians 4:17, it talks about being caught up but it isn't speaking about what we understand as the rapture today. It is referring to a convention where a Roman ruler would triumphantly return to a city and the people would go out to greet him and return with him to the city.
The beast was Nero (his name in Gematria adds up to 666). All of the end times events either happened 1900 years ago or aren't ever going to happen.
In the event of the Rapture America is doomed. How is a country that loses 60% of its population supposed to compete with the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Shinto, etc... countries that were almost untouched? Does the Left Behind series even talk about this? I've never read the novels, but what little I know of it made the scope seem focused on the USA. Does the rest of the world just carry on as normal and it's just America that goes all Mad Max?
Honestly, one would expect New York City to be one of the less impacted locales on account of the cultural diversity and general high level of sin according to Evangelicals. Same with California. It's the Midwest that gets wiped out.
Left Behind is a very poorly written series so it doesn't address any of this well but: most christians don't get raptured but also any child under 12? does regardless of religion. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25011483-the-anti-christ... (which uses the left behind books as a jumping off point) is worth reading as an explanation of the political world we live in.
The book sort of constantly forgets that every child under 12 in the world means that every one on the planet should be deeply traumatized.
I think the visions of people floating up into the sky are somewhat fanciful and are the result of people reading too literally into a translation. The actual Rapture is just whichever people qualify suddenly dropping dead on the spot as their souls are whisked away. Some probably get put on life support machines but never wake up again.
This is the biblically accurate version. In heaven the body has no more purpose than the clothes people wear, so the bodies should just drop dead empty of souls.
However, a more terrifying interpretation could be that the bodies have no reason to just drop dead just because the soul is gone, instead, they would continue functioning as P-Zombies. This could mean the rapture already happened and we're just not aware of it. If you are not a P-Zombie, you weren't raptured. This could be a premise for a pretty cool story.
This is not the biblical teaching about the body. The hope emphasized in the Bible is for the resurrection of the body. This is why Jesus is resurrected bodily, and not as some kind of ghost. If the body was some kind of superfluous thing like clothes, this would make no sense. This is also why the Nicene Creed says “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the World to Come.” The World to Come likewise is a renewed version of this world, where Heaven and Earth are united, in the same way that the body and soul are. This idea of the soul shedding the body is Platonic, not Christian.
As for the rapture itself, it is considered to be nonsense by virtually all biblical scholars, both secular and religious, but how it became such a widespread belief among Americans is probably for another website.
This is a thoughtful piece, and I'm surprised that most of the comments here are focusing on the evangelicals who are thirsty for the Rapture. While misguided, those people aren't much of a problem, as they are mostly waiting for the end times, grandiosely sure that they are among the chosen.
All that discussion of evangelicals is really a setup for the real focus of the article: people like Yarvin, Musk, and Theil, who have the power to actually have the influence and money to cause significant damage to society. And they are acting on it. Although there are cranks on the left who think the solution to the problems of capitalism is its demise, they are not in a position of power. It is ironic it is the so called conservatives who are actually trying to destroy society as we know it.
After reading this very well-written essay, what jumped out at me was "this is rich person psychosis". It seems like the easiest answer. Rich people know they are destroying the world, and rather than dial it back, they have mentally cracked and are fantasizing (and probably literally fetishizing -- in that it becomes sexual) about end-of-days. They've completely internalized what was a niche Evangelical position since Hal Lindsay (who I am surprised did not pop up in the essay). I know the trope that these folk must be sociopaths, which is why I opt to believe they aren't, and have just damaged themselves with the contradiction they represent. (As for the peasants who believe this? Collateral damage from hero worship.)
I enjoyed the essay from a recent-history perspective, but damn does it scare me.
"Linked theoretically, conceptually, and politically, both to each other and to their unacknowledged or obfuscated ideological origins in accelerationism and nihilism, these endeavors, and their proponents in government and technology sectors, represent the ultimate preppers, ready to start anew somehow and somewhere else: in a self-contained unit like Biosphere 2 or HI-SEAS, on the newly discovered “habitable” planets, or on Mars."
Hmm... I think it's a lot of convoluted, wordy sentences just to paint a scary picture of an invented strawman the author disagrees with.
It's ironic because the usual accusation levied against "preppers" is that they're weirdos who are afraid of fellow man, but the author is playing the same game. It's all nebulous yet clearly connected: the Apple campus in Cupertino, 1960s civil defense posters, the NSA, Sim City 2000, Biosphere 2, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, rural gun nuts, Christian doomsday cults... and what are they working toward? Unclear, but it's obviously something bad.
There is plenty on earth, and a very high quality of life if it weren't for the insane concentration of wealth and overconsumption (think mega data centers to spare us from thinking, among others) resulting in environmental ruin.
And if we got along instead of divisiveness, nationalism, and religious wars, incredible unlocking of value tied up in militaries and relieving consequent mass suffering.
I found the article interesting until they brought up the Apple headquarters. It’s just an office building. Steve Jobs was obsessed with people walking around and bumping to each other. That’s why it’s a circle. The landscaping mimics the area around the Stanford dish where he liked to go on walks with people a talk through things. That’s it. Jony Ive brought the minimalist architecture. No greater meaning. These types of articles tend to lose their way when that try to attribute meaning to things that have no specific meaning.
It's sort of like how all those pseudo-intellectual literature professors and critics who are incapable of creating anything original waste their lives away trying to find deeper meaning in certain books. Often they end up fooling themselves by perceiving patterns in noise. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
There is no rapture coming. The idea of the rapture didn't even exist until Morgan Edwards came up with the idea in 1788. It didn't become popular until John Nelson Darby developed and popularized it starting around 1827-33 by conflating verses from different books of the Bible.
In Matthew 24:40-41 (also Matthew 13) it speaks of one being taken and one being left, but the people being taken are being destroyed by an invading army, like happened in Jerusalem in 70AD when the temple was destroyed. You want to be the one left behind. You also see this in Genesis when the people were taken away by the flood and they perished.
In 1st Thessalonians 4:17, it talks about being caught up but it isn't speaking about what we understand as the rapture today. It is referring to a convention where a Roman ruler would triumphantly return to a city and the people would go out to greet him and return with him to the city.
The beast was Nero (his name in Gematria adds up to 666). All of the end times events either happened 1900 years ago or aren't ever going to happen.
Did anything happen between Darby and Hal Lindsay? Seems like about ~80 year gap before it become de rigeur again?
In the event of the Rapture America is doomed. How is a country that loses 60% of its population supposed to compete with the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Shinto, etc... countries that were almost untouched? Does the Left Behind series even talk about this? I've never read the novels, but what little I know of it made the scope seem focused on the USA. Does the rest of the world just carry on as normal and it's just America that goes all Mad Max?
Honestly, one would expect New York City to be one of the less impacted locales on account of the cultural diversity and general high level of sin according to Evangelicals. Same with California. It's the Midwest that gets wiped out.
Left Behind is a very poorly written series so it doesn't address any of this well but: most christians don't get raptured but also any child under 12? does regardless of religion. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25011483-the-anti-christ... (which uses the left behind books as a jumping off point) is worth reading as an explanation of the political world we live in.
The book sort of constantly forgets that every child under 12 in the world means that every one on the planet should be deeply traumatized.
"America" to these people, is the set of collected souls. They would deny what's left behind is America, its just the landmass north of Mexico.
Perhaps we should rename it as the Peninsular of North Mexico?
There is a conspicuous lack of ceiling mounted escape hatches. A realistic belief in rapture necessitates avoiding being trapped in vaulted ceilings.
I think the visions of people floating up into the sky are somewhat fanciful and are the result of people reading too literally into a translation. The actual Rapture is just whichever people qualify suddenly dropping dead on the spot as their souls are whisked away. Some probably get put on life support machines but never wake up again.
This is the biblically accurate version. In heaven the body has no more purpose than the clothes people wear, so the bodies should just drop dead empty of souls.
However, a more terrifying interpretation could be that the bodies have no reason to just drop dead just because the soul is gone, instead, they would continue functioning as P-Zombies. This could mean the rapture already happened and we're just not aware of it. If you are not a P-Zombie, you weren't raptured. This could be a premise for a pretty cool story.
>In heaven the body has no more purpose
This is not the biblical teaching about the body. The hope emphasized in the Bible is for the resurrection of the body. This is why Jesus is resurrected bodily, and not as some kind of ghost. If the body was some kind of superfluous thing like clothes, this would make no sense. This is also why the Nicene Creed says “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the World to Come.” The World to Come likewise is a renewed version of this world, where Heaven and Earth are united, in the same way that the body and soul are. This idea of the soul shedding the body is Platonic, not Christian.
As for the rapture itself, it is considered to be nonsense by virtually all biblical scholars, both secular and religious, but how it became such a widespread belief among Americans is probably for another website.
Reminded of the spoof "subscribe to have certified athiests look after your pet post rapture" thing.
ah, light black on dark white, my favourite reading setup
This is a thoughtful piece, and I'm surprised that most of the comments here are focusing on the evangelicals who are thirsty for the Rapture. While misguided, those people aren't much of a problem, as they are mostly waiting for the end times, grandiosely sure that they are among the chosen.
All that discussion of evangelicals is really a setup for the real focus of the article: people like Yarvin, Musk, and Theil, who have the power to actually have the influence and money to cause significant damage to society. And they are acting on it. Although there are cranks on the left who think the solution to the problems of capitalism is its demise, they are not in a position of power. It is ironic it is the so called conservatives who are actually trying to destroy society as we know it.
After reading this very well-written essay, what jumped out at me was "this is rich person psychosis". It seems like the easiest answer. Rich people know they are destroying the world, and rather than dial it back, they have mentally cracked and are fantasizing (and probably literally fetishizing -- in that it becomes sexual) about end-of-days. They've completely internalized what was a niche Evangelical position since Hal Lindsay (who I am surprised did not pop up in the essay). I know the trope that these folk must be sociopaths, which is why I opt to believe they aren't, and have just damaged themselves with the contradiction they represent. (As for the peasants who believe this? Collateral damage from hero worship.)
I enjoyed the essay from a recent-history perspective, but damn does it scare me.
"Linked theoretically, conceptually, and politically, both to each other and to their unacknowledged or obfuscated ideological origins in accelerationism and nihilism, these endeavors, and their proponents in government and technology sectors, represent the ultimate preppers, ready to start anew somehow and somewhere else: in a self-contained unit like Biosphere 2 or HI-SEAS, on the newly discovered “habitable” planets, or on Mars."
Hmm... I think it's a lot of convoluted, wordy sentences just to paint a scary picture of an invented strawman the author disagrees with.
It's ironic because the usual accusation levied against "preppers" is that they're weirdos who are afraid of fellow man, but the author is playing the same game. It's all nebulous yet clearly connected: the Apple campus in Cupertino, 1960s civil defense posters, the NSA, Sim City 2000, Biosphere 2, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, rural gun nuts, Christian doomsday cults... and what are they working toward? Unclear, but it's obviously something bad.
There is plenty on earth, and a very high quality of life if it weren't for the insane concentration of wealth and overconsumption (think mega data centers to spare us from thinking, among others) resulting in environmental ruin.
And if we got along instead of divisiveness, nationalism, and religious wars, incredible unlocking of value tied up in militaries and relieving consequent mass suffering.
It's a choice.
People have chosen poorly.