With increasing frequency, political leaders and scientists are predicting that the world as we know it will end in catastrophic ecological, economic or civilizational collapse within ten, twelve, or twenty years. Pick a date. They are all accurate. Prophets of doom are always late in their predictions. In the beginning was collapse. Entropy is the gold standard of the universe. Decay is the way of all things. John the Baptist, Joachim of Fiore, Nostradamus, the Millerites, Gore and Ocasio-Cortez are better historians than prognosticators. The end came and went long before they uttered the apocalypse.
In Norse mythology, the Aesir gods of order and stability are constantly at war with the giants of chaos. Yet, even the gods know that Ragnarok is the end game. Fenrir crunches Odin. The gods die. Chaos wins.
Fire and brimstone are not delusional visions of deranged clerics. The earth burns and everything with it. It was the Egyptians of the scorched desert who first called the sun their god. The desert civilizations developed a clunky, conquering machine of slavery, war, and extraction to resist the burning sun. Imperial expansion was their solution to chaos and decay, but chaos always pushes back with greater force. Partially buried, ancient, oxidized pottery shards dot the desert landscape. Desert dwellers know that collapse is baked into the cake. Since the beginning, oxidation takes us all, in the end. Let there be Light was the death knell for us all.
The wisest philosophers recognize the reality of our earthly epoch as the constant burning of Heraclitus’ fire; the heavens and earth are reserved for fire, says Peter. The universe begins and ends in fire. Everything in between is an oven preheating.
Humans have made a bargain with fire. We have looked to the flames for our salvation. It was a Faustian compromise, from the first man who cooked meat over a flint-sparked fire but burned the forest canopy, to the modern man who powers entire cities with nuclear power but threatens his existence with warheads carrying the same. He knows that the fire that builds his civilization threatens his home. He has little choice. Fire is the savior and the skewer of civilized man.
Yet, look for a moment into the nighttime heavens; though speckled with fiery stars, a vast sea of cold darkness reigns. The cosmic void discredits the earthly philosophers of heat. Before and beyond the sure predictions of our belated forecasters of doom is a vast ocean of nothingness and mystery.
If the philosophers see heat, the mystics see Light. The contemplatives know the sun is a lesser god, a demiurge. True God of true God is energy without heat, an ocean of light, brilliant Being beyond burning Becoming.
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