"In today’s climate there remains a place for positive messaging.
But in the 'post-truth' era, we must embrace subjectivity
as the only way to drive it home."
Art Can Win The War
"Get real."
Pablo Smog
Doomers have an advantage. They lack the delusion and self-righteousness necessary to waste their faith on the world. Anyone who has ever been sucked into a Badge Cam Video vortex, or found themselves binging on "Karens on Airplanes" videos against their will, has experienced enough existential nausea to stand at the gates of eternity without excuse. It's enough to drive a brother into pulling a Snowden and becoming a cultural refugee in the land of Magog. If there wasn't already a dangerous international border protecting me from Karenic Fundamentalism (the word "Karen" is an Anglicization of the word "Koran;" in Islam, Karens are referred to as "Qarens," and are used to wage jihad against the masculinity and social cohesion of their enemies), I would seriously consider it.
I really would.
Remember the scene in I, Pet Goat II when the angry girl in the tiger jacket tries to stop the tanks with her righteous indignation, and whose spirit of naivete in war is instantly deflated when the mad, unholy death jester taps on her shoulder, and she sees at last what she is up against? Her furious naivete deflates with the doomer realization that she is on a conveyor belt and only has 2 choices:
Fact, or fiction. Hope, or doom.
Life, or death.
Shall I don the beanie of sorrow and light another cigarette in resignation unto death, or surrender to the realization that what I got ain't nothin' new, I can't stop what's coming, and that it ain't all waitin' on me.
That's vanity.
What the doomer understands is that when the world reacts to the world like the world, it only creates more world.
Clearly, it's not a war that can be won. And it's not "positive" to believe that it can.
It's naive.
Before you dismiss the entire notion of doomer realism as "defeatist," consider that The Reason For The Coming Hell is that there is still beauty in the world. All that beauty and hope is an echo of God. Anyone who doesn't want Him will be lucky to survive the coming nightmare long enough to see what a world without His attributes is really like. We're not there yet, but because it's obvious we're close, people are making videos like the one above.
That girl has A LOT OF HOPE. Going to war with the mad, unholy death jester who is laughing at us all has stripped her of her naivete.
She is a pincushion of feeling.
A mannequin of pain.
She is passed out on the doormat of Heaven without even knowing it.
In contrast, people who write about living in a "post-truth era" in delusional, self-important articles with titles such as "Art Can Win The War," and who believe subjectivity is the only way to "drive the message home" (since the message is false, and can't be driven home by objective truth), are people who are deeply, profoundly self-handicapped. They shoot themselves in the knees in preparation for a marathon. They gouge their eyes out to improve their vision. They show up at Yankee Stadium with a Wiffle Ball set and believe they're going to win the World Series. They believe dying fish are actually breakdancing. For people who are striving toward a "post-truth era," flopping around like a dying fish becomes an actual art, or a sport. They are flailing around on the killing fields of culture, competing like people who flunked out of the school of dying fish for the medal of who can lower the standards of the world faster:
The armies of Satan, or moral and artistic relativists?
They are transparently insane.
Of course, it's all the same. The moral and artistic relativists are grunts in Satan's army. As we all have been, at some point. The question is,
Will you remain there? Will you remain in service of the world, and The Incandescent Darkness glowing like the fires of hell within?
Or will you extinguish the flames, remove the beanie of sorrow, and thank God for the grace that has allowed you to see through the glib, dismissive veneer of wannabe joy, so that you might be spared from the coming hell, and enter into peace?
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
knock, and it shall be opened unto you:”
Matthew 7:7
The doomer has a choice. To have one foot out of the world is only the first step. To stay there is to be torn in half. It is possible to be comfortable in misery, and be destroyed by the tug-of-war between fact and fiction, hope and doom, life and death. To respond to the world with a half-world is still to respond like the world.
It is better to commit. Go all the way down the narrow path of life. Faith in the world is obviously mis-spent, so lift your other foot and begin the walk of faith into the light of the unknown. It only looks dark to worldly eyes.
You will absolutely make it, but only if you stay on the path. To stay on the path is to finish the race. You will slip, and you will fall, and you will trip over all kinds of crazy obstacles. But whatever you do, stay on the path. If you stay on the path, you will reach the finish line. But harbor no illusions about the battle for your soul. It's merciless and brutal. God will protect you, but don't stray off into the weeds.
There's no more time for naivete in war.
