The Last Word
BESSER, JAMES DAVID
THE LAST WORD James David Besser The Doomsday Decade Since we seem to be fond of attaching titles to entire decades but haven't yet found one for the 1980s, I have a suggestion: Let's call this...
...It no longer takes religious or supernatural faith to accept the possibility of doomsday...
...One enterprise advertises that it can provide a whole year's worth of 1200-calorie days for a measly $639...
...The ethic of individual survival is based on a retreat from social responsibility...
...Those of us who grew up when nuclear-tipped missiles were new and their use seemed inevitable have doomsday anxieties deeply imbedded in our psyches...
...From the hard-core millennialism of Interior Secretary James Watt to the cataclysmic opportunism of Howard Ruff, the idea that Armageddon in one form or another is around the corner hasn't enjoyed such currency since the days of the Salem witch trials...
...Doomsday fever is a sign of surrender— an abandoning of attempts to change the world...
...Clearly, the appeal of the doomsday concept transcends narrow political and social bounds...
...Still, survivalism in all its guises is an inadequate response—an exercise in blissful myopia...
...Certainly people across the political spectrum feel frustrated or despondent about the possibilities of coping with such awesome problems...
...There is comfort in the ironclad certainty that the time is at hand when the righteous or at least prudent will reap their rewards, while the wicked or improvident will be punished...
...Nuclear weaponry has imparted a ghastly reality to ideas that were previously found only in the realms of parable and mythology...
...Gold coins and guns are to the conservative survivalists what Mother Earth News is to those on the Left...
...For the three-piece-suit set, there is the grim optimism of Howard Ruff and his James David Besser is a free-lance writer in Washington, D.C...
...The nuances of fine political shadings, the advisability of political compromise, didn't matter much when what we faced was the virtual certainty of global destruction...
...it's a low-grade infection always present in our species, and it tends to erupt into full-blown epidemics during periods of economic uncertainty and rapid social and technological change...
...Certainly these are perilous times that find us poised on the brink of various environmental, biological, and missile-borne calamities...
...The Survival Foods Company of Albany, Indiana, says possession of such a cache "might turn a frightening, dangerous experience into an adventure...
...Perhaps that anticipation helps to release some of the anger people feel about their inability to influence or even understand events in our careening world...
...In confusing, frightening times like ours, there is something enticing about the prospect of wiping clean the cosmic slate...
...The question conveys a pathetic sort of personal logic that is incompatible with the logic of collective survival...
...Then there are the swarms of Christian fundamentalists who see in today's troubled headlines signs of the prophesied "time of tribulations" and the arrival of the Antichrist, who, they are convinced, is already using Social Security numbers and universal product codes to prepare his minions for the last showdown...
...Nor was there much, in such circumstances, to recommend deferred gratification...
...But our uncertain and changing era has added new dimensions to the sickness...
...Many of yesterday's activists have long since headed for the hills, seeking refuge from war, environmental calamity, and social collapse in a parasitic kind of self-sufficiency...
...In Utah, affluent buyers are scrambling for space in a 240-unit underground survival condominium that comes equipped with simulated vistas emblazoned on simulated windows...
...Why come to grips with a changing economy, with the vexing issues of war and peace, with continuing inequities and injustices, when total collapse is imminent...
...collective survival demands social activism...
...Why worry about the teeming masses in the urban slums if you can afford to buy a nice little Vermont homestead and get into earthworm farming and wind power...
...THE LAST WORD James David Besser The Doomsday Decade Since we seem to be fond of attaching titles to entire decades but haven't yet found one for the 1980s, I have a suggestion: Let's call this the Doomsday Decade...
...We may know the answers before the end of the Doomsday Decade...
...The question of survival is now twofold: Will we survive our bombs and all our environmental depredations, and will we survive our retreat into the emotional narcotic of preparing for Armageddon...
...After all, preparations for individual survival must be made...
...it merely requires access to the television news...
...In Ocean Pines, Maryland, a developer sells summer cottages equipped with such options as fallout shelters and pre-stashed survival foods...
...Why grapple with bewildering problems when simple, other-worldly solutions are at hand...
...Doomsday fever is nothing new, of course...
...Undoubtedly this contributed to the volatile mix of apocalyptic politics and drug-centered hedonism that characterized the late 1960s...
...Recently, the allure of the doomsday mentality has spread beyond this young vanguard...
...upwardly-mobile disciples, who intend to turn a nice profit from any catastrophe short of total devastation of the solar system...
...The survival foods industry is thriving...
...It is important to note that doomsayers of all types are certain that they will survive to dish out just deserts and intone the ultimate "I told you so...
Vol. 46 • August 1982 • No. 8
