Picking Fights with the Gods

The common understanding of apocalypse suggests End Times Armageddon and the end of the world. But the Greek word apokalypsis means none of these things. What it does mean is uncovering disclosing and revelatory.That apocalypse is so widely misunderstood as predestined disaster isn't due to natural evolution in meaning. To penetrate the misuse of apokalypsis is to discover mythic misrepresentation. That is apocalypse doesn't generate End Times but--just the opposite--End Times compels apokalypsis.The actual threat of End Times--explicitly so with weapons of mass destruction and Anthropocene climate change--forces thoughtful people into a search for fundamental causes: Where do these destructive energies originate? Why are we so reluctant to recognize the obvious consequences and resistant to embrace available remedies? Why do we persist in denial and indifference?In these essays Paul Gilk explores the underlying cultural and religious conventions (both conservative and liberal) that constitute our resistance and refusal. To disclose and uncover those conventions to dissolve our oblivion is to awaken to apokalypsis and to realize the depth of our captivity within prevailing mythology both religious and civilizational.If End Times is the disease apokalypsis is the cure.