SNP’s word of the day: Apocalypticism

Word: Apocalypticism

Meaning: A belief—religious or secular—that the apocalypse is coming, or, more germanely, a belief that the apocalypse is coming in our time.

Usage: Paraphrasing Ferris Bueller: “I don’t believe in apocalypticism, or any -ism for that matter.”

You should know it because: You probably feel it. True, as long as the world has had a beginning, people have believed it would have an end. Religion or no religion, life on Earth is geared more to entropy than to infinity. In the age of nuclear development and the Cold War, people believed—with reason—that our Earth could explode at literally any second. The best movie Francis Ford Coppola ever made (sorry, Godfather fans, also known as “everybody”) was Apocalypse Now (1979), and ever since that sense of “the end is upon us” has more or less non-stop prevailed.

But lately, apocalypticism is bigger than ever, and the collective sense of foreshadowing threatens to blot out the sun. Everything from hurricanes to skinhead movements to the existence of Teen Moms is called out as a sure sign of planetary collapse. Are we exaggerating? Depends how healthy your skepticism is. Anyone with even the slightest apocalypticist tendency knows about psychedelic pseudo-seer Daniel Pinchbeck and his enlightened twist on the Mayan prophecy, in which the world—as we know it, at least—ends. But don’t worry, says Britney. The apocalypse will be choreographed. Her VMA-winning music video for “Til the World Ends” proves one woman’s planetary disaster is another woman’s nu-grunge orgy.

For a more realistic—and thus far more unsettling—vision of apocalypticism, go see the Jeff Nichols film Take Shelter (opening in a month), in which a regular-style man is haunted by glimpses of the rapture, to the point of insanity. And yet, it doesn’t seem all that crazy.

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