The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 11, 2024, 05:35:20 pm ---If this extends beyond the religious sense, I fear you might be right. According to my phone, high temperature in the next 10 days will only once dip below 30 and only three times dip below freezing. In Minneapolis. In February. There's no snow on the ground, and only 7" have fallen all winter. I've heard of Christmases here that weren't white, but never whole winters that weren't.
--- End quote ---
Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor? ???
In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).
Front-Ranger:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2024, 10:47:07 pm ---In any case, it came to me after I finished Elizabeth Kolbert on wildfires (Feb. 5).
--- End quote ---
In that article, I liked the part about how the Native Americans controlled the ecosystem through fires. They proved it's possible to manage large-scale agriculture and animal husbandry without major technology and large groups of people.
"The Oligarch's Son" in the Feb. 12/19th issue is another in the magazine's long-running series about people masquerading as someone they're not. I kept reading the 15-page article even though there was a lot of repetition. The poor parents whose son leapt to his death in the Thames doggedly tried to move the investigation forward and hold people accountable. The description of London as the world's (money) laundromat was very interesting. I wonder why the magazine finds these stories so compelling and emblematic of our times.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on February 11, 2024, 10:47:07 pm ---Yes, I did mean it beyond the religious sense. What would you call my use of the terminology? Allusion? I was using the religious terminology to mean something else? Does it qualify as a metaphor? ???
--- End quote ---
I haven't read the Bible's description of End Times, so maybe Jeff can share knowledgeable insight, but I've always assumed that even there was even meant to be a rough sketch that could happen under various circumstances. So the book and TV show "The Leftovers," a huge percentage of people (maybe 10%? 30% can't remember but not half) suddenly simultaneously have disappeared for no apparent reason. That of course sparks all kinds of weird responses, grieving, religious and otherwise. It's never explained as the Rapture, but clearly it sort of is, or at least a secular version thereof. But in every other way it's 21st-century America. (Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on February 17, 2024, 03:06:53 pm ---(Do the Rapture and End Times refer to the same events?)
--- End quote ---
I think the Rapture is supposed to happen in the End Times, when the True Faithful Believers (or some such) get taken bodily and alive up into the clouds and to Heaven (or something like that).
I guess you could say I was really just applying the Christian religious terminology to the sense I got from Kolbert that the world as we know it is coming to an end, and there's nothing we can now do to stop it. It's too late. We're past the tipping point (to steal a phrase from Malcolm McDowell).
Jeff Wrangler:
I am even more behind than usual. I had two issues with me up at the house, and I just didn't feel like reading either of them.
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