Apocalypse – Susan X Jane

Life with Coronovirus: Come Together, Stay Apart

Sure you’ve seen every virus movie known to man, but now its time to truly prepare for the new normal

In the matter of a few short weeks, life, as we know it, has ground to a halt, the world is going into lockdown, markets have flipped from bull to bear as mother nature issues her own correction in the form of Covid 19. Millions of Americans are stuck in the house binge-eating, binge-watching and trying not to kill family–Like an endless Thanksgiving without the turkey and colonization.

Welcome to the apocalypse. Yup, you are officially here–though for readers of this blog we know the signs of the times have been on full display for quite a while. That doesn’t mean its time to dig your Mad Max uniform out of the trunk and ride out. Apocalypse comes from the Greek, translating loosely to an unveiling. It is the end of the illusion, not the end of time. Apocalypses are the moments where the truth of our world is revealed beneath the shiny bullshit veneer of the simulation we’ve been living in. Welcome to the desert of the real.

The Covid crisis is revealing the limitations of capitalism to sustain people in a world increasingly marked by crisis, just a single symptom of climate change. In a matter of months, a virus has shown us what we have willfully ignored for too long: we are one, a human organism connected globally, a mass of cells moving in solidarity whether we want to or not, whether we acknowledge it or not. Your latte-drinking lash-wearing tik tok dancing life has been rendered obsolete. There is no star status that will protect you from the virus, but we see too, that our systems of inequality are already making the crisis worse. Unequal distribution of resources and racism, xenophobia, and sexism will mean those traditionally marginalized will be the hardest hit.

How can you shelter in place if you have no shelter? How can you call your health care provider if you don’t have one? When we have to choose who gets what they need and who doesn’t who will stand up for those without a seat at the table?

But before we can parse the dissembling power structures, we have to survive the collapse. Now this, my Apocalyptic America fans, is something we have been preparing for. Time for all the lessons of all those movies of the end time to guide your pandemic plays. Let’s start with these to get you through the weekend:

No Gas, All Break

Daily White House Press briefings are important sources of news, but if you’re not careful you might forget that this is the president with over 15,000 recorded lies during his time in office. Avoid the gaslighting that everything is okay, nothing to see here. Gaslighting is a real and dangerous communication dynamic. After months of the Trump Administration telling us that truth isn’t truth, you may find your ability to trust your own sense of what is real is not as strong as the pandemic coverage requires. Trust scientists. Trust the data. Err on the side of caution.

Take regular news breaks with credible sources. The New York Times has comprehensive and well-researched coverage, and have removed their paywall, giving everyone access to their up to date reporting. The Washington Post, likewise, is using its big newsroom resources to provide coverage. Local press is likely to be telling the stories no one else is and to give you the skinny on what is happening in your area. Check out your hometown paper and look for independent reporting on twitter and online. Spread your news sources around, but avoid opinion pieces that lack evidence and conspiracy posts with fear-inducing clickbait titles. As always, snopes.com and factcheck.org are good places to vet what you’re reading before you decide to share.

Pace Your Panic

Okay, you have enough toilet paper. With over a week of panic shopping behind us, its time to stop freaking out and settle in for the long haul. Early reports that prepared us for just a couple of weeks without school are giving way to warnings that this pandemic could lead to 12 to 18 months of disruption. Even when the threat of the virus passes, we know that we will be returning to an economy in shambles, and many people in dire need of support. You cannot keep up toilet-paper-hoarding levels of panic for months: your mental and physical health simply cannot sustain that. We need you healthy for the recovery, so please, pace your panic. Yes, shit is scary as fuck so set aside a little time to let it all in so you are rooted in the seriousness of the moment. Balance that awareness with healthy levels of self-care, seclusion, and emotional management. Read- draw- create- play- eat- move- drink- dance- this mess around on the daily, and keep your mind sharp and body ready for the long term challenges ahead.

Connect Without Commerce

Shelter in place orders and social distancing mean stores, bars, restaurants, and other public gathering spots are closed. Don’t let capitalism’s pause keep you from getting the social connection you need so much in this stressful time. This is a chance for us to make space in our lives for connection without commerce. This is the time when we can leverage the very best of social media to bring us together, lift us up, and find new ways of spending time together apart. Internet–do you meme thing to keep us laughing; video chat apps, time to show us the lovely faces of our people in virtual family visits, work yoga groups, happy hour hangouts for singles, or mommy homeschool wine and support groups; Text, talk, post and crosspost to build a net of connection across the physical distance between us.

Since everything–or nearly everything–is closed, many of us suddenly have the time we haven’t been able to give to our loved ones. Yeah, your kids may be yelling or your spouse underfoot or your dog barking nonstop, but if they are driving you crazy, that means they are still here, and that is a blessing you will be all too grateful for in the days ahead. Schedules are a little clearer, our time together more dear than ever. Have that conversation you’ve been meaning to have. Reach out and tell those you love what they mean to you. We will need more love than facemasks or hospital beds, so make love in every way you can-in cookies and games and hugs and words and kisses and kisses and kisses if you are lucky enough to have your loved one in your containment zone.

We will survive as an organism but not without damage to the very fabric of our lives. Things will not be the same, and that may be okay. It is time to build a new world anyways. Hunker down for the hard road ahead. Build your resilience to support your people and your community. Connect, connect, connect. Now more than ever, it is solidarity or nothing.

It’s 2018: You Survived the Apocalypse

As a kid, I had problems–bullying, a little racism, typical teen drama. Sometimes when I would complain to my Dad he would impassively ruffle the pages of his newspaper and ask:

“Are you dead?”

Was he not listening to the blow by blow I just sobbed out? What does being dead have to do with anything? I would always spit out, “No,” with a pout. I knew what came next.

“Then you’re fine.” He would offer from behind his paper. Case closed.

What kind of bullshit was this? Could he not see the angst and pain my personal battles were causing me? Didn’t he care? I remember feeling that the simplicity of his answer was cold in light of the hard world outside our home. As with all good lessons, only later I came to see I had it backward: the world was cold and he was helping me create a hardness inside me to protect against its chill.

Later, in my room, gnashing my teeth in anger at the exchange, what would make me most mad is that I could not deny that he was right. No matter what anybody had said to me, no matter what emotional knots I tied myself up in over my battles, I was in fact, not dead, I was still here. In the end, when I got out of my feelings, I found myself still alive.

Over time this taught me no one’s taunts had the power to kill me, only to weaken me by pushing me off my mark, bending me out of integrity. Bullies were strongest when I let them push my buttons when I tried to go tit for tat. The fear and anger I felt as a result of their harassment only clouded my ability to respond. Acknowledging that I survived each challenge I faced helped me see I could not control the actions of other people but I could control myself. I could know that I was strong enough to face whatever was put in my way. It was not really about being fine, it was about knowing that I had the power and fortitude to keep going and keep moving, motivated by a deep faith that I would persist. I learned could thrive amongst difficulty. Knowing this gave me the control I needed to face my bullies with courage and composure.

Over time, I began to ask myself that same question in times of difficulty. When I thought I could not go on when the pain and misery of the world bent me out of integrity I would perform a quick gut check: am I dead? No? Then keep it pushing. I cannot control every monster but over time I learned I could control my own demons. This is the key to staying in the fight, to living to fight another day.

Sometimes the world seems too much to bear. I remember this time last year, seized with fear and uncertainty at the prospect of a Trump presidency, at a country set to explode. And then 2017 came. And we did blow up.

This year was a raging dumpster fire beginning to end. A year of Trump driving America right over a cliff–killing Obamacare and net neutrality, defunding science, tax breaks for the rich, the immigration ban, appointing unqualified judges and championing racism and sexism and classism as patriotic values. The country I love is on fire. The world is teetering on the brink of chaos. Our best hope seems to be a man with a rocket ship to Mars. The details of 2017 read like a list of signs of the apocalypse right out of several Hollywood movies.

And yet, we are not dead.

Even stranger, I feel wildly optimistic. The ground is razed and I’m in a mood to build. See, here’s a little secret I learned about the apocalypse. The end is never the end, only a new beginning. The word apocalypse comes from the Greek apo–un and kaluptein–to cover–to uncover, to reveal. An apocalypse isn’t an end, it’s an unveiling.

In the purest sense of the word, 2017 was a true apocalypse. America had long slumbered in a self-congratulatory slump, shoving a big foam we’re-number-one-finger in the world’s face while racism and sexism seethed unseen beneath the mainstream’s gaze. Globalization turned us into a nation of consumers, too proud to realize we were slipping behind in the knowledge economy. The untreated virus of white supremacy weakened our country for centuries and the only treatments rendered were to deny, destroy and disempower communities of color. Patriarchy kept one boot squarely on half the population, capitalism kept both boots on us all. With all that going on, we were too busy buying shit and numbing out to the pap of spoon-fed pop culture to notice.

Then came 2017: the rise of the alt-right. The blossoming of the new black civil rights movement. #Me Too. And Trump, Trump a pimple that exploded in all the ugliness beneath America’s skin. There are no more secrets here.

As a wise man once said, “if you don’t know, now you know…”

The scabby underbelly has revealed itself, disallowing us the ability to ignore the contradictions at the heart of our country, contradictions that threaten to tear us all apart: if we are the land of the free, why are we chained in debt? if this is the home of the brave, why have we ignored those who stand up to speak truth to power? if we are all created equal, then why are we so unequal? Can we ever be a more perfect union?

As painful as this year has been, we can see plainly what our country is. Gone are our rose-colored glasses, numbness turned to rage and fear. The trick now is to not let the emotions of these times cloud our ability to think clearly, act cooperatively and build towards a new vision, not just defend against the daily onslaught. As difficult as it is to be woke, it is the only way forward.

The apocalypse is an end only to the status quo. The upheaval is real, the chaos of old structures shaking to their core terrifying, but hush your fear and look for the opportunities to build. Channel your anger to weather the upheaval. The apocalypse ushers in a new time, the next paradigm. Don’t get lost in the distractions while new powerbrokers make new rules. The resistance is working, too, each of us in our own way. We have the knowledge, the technology, and–I know with every fiber of my being–the human compassion needed to build a better world, more perfect than our forefathers could imagine.

So on this first day of 2018, I offer you this gut check: if you are reading this, you’re not dead. You’re still here. And 2017 was a bitch, so that’s really saying something. Strap on your helmet. Like Elon Musk’s rockets, we have explosions at each stage, shedding a firey ball of flame across the sky, but I assure you we are ascending. As we jettison the lies we had come to depend on, we will be free to evolve past our imperfect past. As long as we don’t burn up in the process, we are entering the wider universe. We are transforming into something more.

T(rump) Minus 6

We landed in Washington D.C. yesterday, a gaggle of activist students, their queer polis-sci professor and me, afro flying my flag of blackness above my airplane seat. The airports, the streets are awash with pink pussy hats and red white and blue patriotic chic. The air contains just a hint of pep rally. The grim reality gives off a scent more like that Aztec ballgame where the losers are decapitated.

In just six hours, a few miles from here Donald J Trump and his creep squad cabinet will take over the country that I have lived in and loved my whole life. He has promised to enact policies that will hurt the people I love and care about, including each of the students with us on this trip. The pink hats are so cute (thanks, Aunt Kathie!) but make no mistake this is a fight.

Scene: Interior, day before the inauguration, hotel lobby. Beneath the altar of CNN on the big screen a bunch of liberals from Boston–identifiable by our Boston swag and the girls’ Olivia Pope outfits, and in that corner three women painted in stars and stripes. The hotel staff watch the action like tourists on safari.

Hotel manager: Ha ha, hope there’s not going to be a rumble!

Trumpette: grumbling loud enough for all to hear. I wouldn’t mind seeing that.

Me: Ha, ha…You don’t want to catch these hands.

Trumpette: Let’s be peaceful….(to her cronies.) I hope they remember to be peaceful on Saturday [for the anticipated Women’s March]

Me: (to students) Saturday you’ll get to see the amazing tradition of nonviolent protest that is such an important part of our country.

End scene.

Would I have rumbled with an older lady in the hotel lobby? In the rarefied air of the inauguration, the hate and division are real and palpable as my anger hurt and fear over this election and the 4 years to come. yesterday evening I replayed the scene in my mind–how easy it was for me and a stranger to escalate to threats lightly veiled in laughter in just seconds. These past few years have required me to swallow more than a little anger and hurt. I had to admit that it is too easy to slide into the playground taunting. But in a quiet moment, I remembered that I’m not about that, no matter how much they spoil for a fight. In the land of the walking dead, its is key to remember that you are not them.

So, old lady, you may not catch these hands, but I am coming for you with the full force of resistance and that really packs a punch. And the fight is just about to start.

Apocalyptic Cinema: Better Living Through Science

Since the beginning of the century, American films have explored stories of the apocalypse as commentary on our own modern challenges. Stories of the horrors science can create when man tries to play God lurk beneath the most popular zombie shows and in the cool futuristic sci-fi of super humans. These stories are equal parts inspiration and warning–a look over the cliff over science to the abyss of possibility that lies ahead of us. These stories, in turn, look into us, into our longing to be stronger, more powerful and to live forever.

In Apocalyptic America, we’ve been looking at the questions posed to us by the modern world that we live in–advances in science, new technologies and a host of problems caused by the postindustrial human condition–and the answers film gives us. Apocalyptic movies allow us to seen through a glass darkly at a world that awaits us as a consequence of our now. So it is with movies about humans tinkering with the laws of nature.

Some things that might get your sci-fi imagination going:

If you could use science to modify your body, would you? If so, how would you modify your body?

Would you diet or using science to make you super shapely or strong?

After having 10 cosmetic procedures in 1 day, Montag struggled emotionally, lost her show and is appearing this season on reality tv therapy show with her mother.

Would you choose the sex of your future baby? Or ensure their special skills?

Gender selection is banned in some countries, but not the US. Gender selection that occurred less scientifically as a result of China’s one-child-per-family rule is being blamed for a massive imbalance between males and females, having long-term consequences for marriage, births, and elder care

Would you modify your body to survive a disease or environmental crisis?

Before you say you would never alter your body, think instead about modification on a continuum from small changes like piercing your ears or wearing glasses all the way to the more extreme iterations like lizard man or gene therapy. As futuristic as some modification technology is, altering the body is nothing new. How acceptable these procedures are seems to connect to how much what they provide is “needed” according to cultural conventions and norms.

Medical Augmentations: Altering or adding to the body to compensate for disease or deformity is most acceptable with widespread support for advances.

Cosmetic modification: altering the body to improve appearance according to common beauty conventions is somewhat acceptable, especially if you meet the conventions conventionally. The more extreme the augmentation, the more unacceptable it becomes.

Genetic modification: Altering genes to change the structure of the body or object is controversial whether you are a tomato or a zygote. Genetically modified fruit–sometimes called Franken fruit–is blamed for a host of problems for humans and their environment, but also ubiquitous in our grocery stores. Modifying human embryos is illegal–today.

The gene-ie (ha! I got jokes in writing!) is already out of the bottle. Like our exploration into artificial intelligence and technology, the question is really no longer would we or wouldn’t we, but to what degree should we. Sadly, ethics around biological advances in science are far behind the technology.

Films approach a few of the ways that changes in human engineering could play out in our culture, affecting power, capital, and social relationships. Many movies prior to 2000 focused on the disastrous consequences of genes gone bad. Human-made monsters because of the lack of control of genetic processes.

As we move into the era of apocalyptic dread the stories shift a bit. As humans become more skilled at making changes to nature and potentially humans, we explore—and fear—the possibilities of what we might create. Here are some examples and the questions they ask

If we make humans, what rights do they have?

Human cloning hits new levels of skill—and for new reasons in this upbeat thriller. If we could make people, would we grant them the same inalienable rights we claim are for all? Note: we do have a hard time ensuring humans rights for all humans now a days. On the plus side, so far we have no structure for identifying babies born using genetic enhancements or fertility treatments.

How would capitalism manage the availability of advances in health tech?

Repo Men is the story of a world where people can buy organs to replace failing ones. Like a new car, if you don’t pay, the corporation sends someone to retrieve your organs. Healthcare costs are already a leading cause of bankruptcy. How much would a heart cost? Probably not less than Wheelock.

What would we do with Superhumans?

A host of movies like Lucy and Limitless and, of course, Xmen find ways to hack the human brain to open up our full potential. Oddly, the movie never ends with a world peace accord. Overwhelmingly advances in humans are coopted to earn capital or fight battles. How culturally hegemonic.

The ideas about what it means to be human and how easily we can lose all that we think we know is nothing new to your COM250 experience, Apocalyptic Americans–these are the common questions that underpin lots of Apocalyptic movies, and, truth be told, they underpin humanity’s grand story as well. The questions about how to navigate the boundaries of power, class and privilege in an era of evolved humanity are also the same questions about how to restructure society in the wake of wokeness that we have seen all semester. Just as we can’t imagine an end without us, robots without us, so we can’t imagine a new breed of super-humans without us either.

So what’s new in human engineering? Is there truth hiding inside these movies or is this boogie man solely in the mind of Hollywood?

Cosmetic Alteration

Paying a surgeon to give you the body of your dreams becomes more popular every year–the number of procedures is up in 2015. Cosmetic augmentation is common with more than 15 million cosmetic procedures performed last year. The most common procedures are botox, fillers, and chemical peels–all aimed to turn back the hand of time. Speaking of turning back, butt implants continue to be one of the fastest growing invasive procedures. Yeah, Kim!

Medical Augmentation

From 3d printing new limbs to growing new organs in a lab, medical science is moving ahead by leaps and bounds. Pop star Viktoria Modesta and her fantastic light up leg shows how transformative new technology can be in redefining ability. Advances in medical technology will increase your lifespan, but many ethical questions—including who can afford it—abound.

Genetic modification

Since the human genome was first mapped in 2003, our knowledge of the role genes play in making you you has expanded rapidly. If we can manipulate the genes of fruit to make the fruit we desire, might similar techniques be used to create the children we desire?

All of these futures before us are rife with the kind of possibilities that come with consequences we can only dream of. Far more serious than a few butt implants, the implications of all this tinkering are beyond even Hollywood’s wild mind. The challenges couldn’t be more real. Just a few months ago a US based organization, endorsed by over 150 experts int he field called for a moratorium on human genetic modification, warning that once we begin, the irreversible process can have implications beyond the boundary of any of these movies. Truth, it seems remains stranger than fiction.

I teach a course called Apocalyptic America where we explore film and TV about the end of the world and find out what they tell us about the challenges of our own world. The above is a makeup blog lecture (a blecture?) from a recent class. If you made it this far, you get an A for the day.

The Day After Is Today

Have you ever noticed that you’re surrounded by zombies and invading aliens and survivalist? Stories about the end of the world are everywhere these days, from The Walking Dead to Elysium. Despite the fact that we can breathe a sign of relief with 2012 behind us, visions of the apocalypse still dance in our heads. So, to explore, I have been teaching a class at my college called Apocalyptic America, where we are trying to find out why our culture is so obsessed with the end. The answer is complicated and fascinating.

Stories of the end of the world are as old as the world itself, but if you think we have a particularly bad case of the apocalyptic blues, you’d be right. Rapid changes in society, advances in technology, and a changing geopolitical landscape gave us any number of avenues for our fears to run down. Aliens, Dawn of the Dead, and The Matrix showed us that the end was at hand by robots, or aliens or worst yet ourselves.

Even with Y2K a dud, the obsession with the end continued to snowball down the timeline from 2000, past 9/11 and straight towards 2012. Literally dozens of movies and television shows have played out the chess game of our imminent demise and the dark future that awaits us beyond the boundaries of our modern world.

This week, the class took a look at the 1983 made for TV film The Day After. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember the hubbub around this film. Nearly 100 million people tuned in, and the film was followed by a televised debate on nuclear weapons, and accompanied by a toll-free hotline with counselors, school curriculum, and even a five episode series on conflict on Mr. Rogers to help children cope.

I had debated including the film. With so many films to look at, The Day After seemed a bit dated, the Cold War seems a distant memory to my students. Though conflict, obviously, has been an all too present headline throughout college students’ lives, the threat of wholesale nuclear annihilation seemed to belong to another generation.

But this past weeks events in Crimea and Ukraine made this 20-year-old movie seem as relevant as ever. At last week’s CPAC conference, keynote speaker Sarah Palin leveled criticism at Obama for choosing diplomacy over force in her usually eloquent and well thought out way.

Sadly for Momma Bear, and all of us, she is woefully wrong. As terrifyingly demonstrated in The Day After, nuclear war leaves no winners, only casualties. Stopping Putin with nukes in Crimea is a recipe for MAD–mutually assured destruction. But even with all we know about the consequences of nuclear war, I was surprised to see news headlines this morning heralding a return of the nuclear age.

The number of nuclear weapons stockpiled by countries, armed and ready has declined through consistent and concerted efforts of antiwar activists. However, the amount of plutonium available through commercial production opens and avenue for rogues to obtain material for bomb making easier than ever before.

The tension in Crimea reminds us that we still have work to do to make our world a stable safe place to live and grow in. We can’t ride in Grizzly-style and fight nukes with nukes, and we can’t think that nuclear war is a threat of the past. Instead of encouraging brute strength, use your political power to vote, advocate and petition to stop nuclear proliferation.

Ronald Reagan watched The Day After, and he wrote in his diary that it changed his idea of a winnable nuclear war. He said , “we have to do all that we can to be sure that there is never a nuclear war. ” Shortly thereafter, Reagan helped to end the Cold War. So do me a favor: send Sarah Palin a copy of The Day After, and let’s not fight nukes with nukes.