One need not be a religious believer to feel that we live in Apocalyptic times. We are reaching the limits of our society to maintain basic cohesion and of our ecosystem to support us. And we see the spread of toxic forms of ideology which emphasise identity and difference in a way which works against the spirit of universal love which might gather us in and set us on a true path. And the pandemic has tended to make us fear each other and to put our trust in a centralised authority which has often proved unworthy of that trust.
Some say that we need to return to Christian values. This seems valid if one takes those values from a non-literal interpretation of the Gospels. There are too many of us who call ourselves Christians while departing from those values - of love and honesty and non-judgement and charity - to expect that holding up Christianity as an answer will win the approval of unbelievers.
I say this and yet the one thing I fall back on to give me some modicum of hope is that Jesus prophesied that the darkest moment would herald his return. I may not believe in a supernatural sense, but a pattern which is central to our greatest story is not to be lightly dismissed, especially when the alternative is a slow painful extinction for the human race and all the beauty in the world.
Some believe that the heart of human psychology is competition. Nature is a competition for food and mating opportunities. But it seems to me that love is the primary grounding of our psychology. The love bond between mother and child is the foundation of our development. Later there are factors which alienate us from that. If our survival as an individual is in peril, if we are feeling the impulse to serve the breeding impulse, and, particularly, if we are in a psychologically insecure state, then this acts as interference temporarily blocking out our more profound nature. But if we meet a stranger in a situation in which we feel no danger to our survival or our psychological integrity, then there is no reason we won't feel a fellowship with them which is a return to the essence of our first way of relating to another human being, but without the element of complete dependence.
Psychological insecurity is the root of our problems. I know it all too well. If my belief system were made up of secure building blocks, then I would not want to see those who think differently proven humiliatingly wrong. Don't we see this in ourselves and others, particularly on the topic of politics. We build our ego castles and hurl projectiles of mockery at those of our fellows. The "other" becomes perhaps a stand-in for everyone who has ever hurt us. We get an outlet for our frustration, but no healing for that hurt.
So is, perhaps, an Apocalypse the last stand of a failing strategy? There is no doubt that business as usual is proving to be a massive failure. If that failure breaks us, will we, in newfound humility, acknowledge the long-denied truth and fall back into our capacity for love?
