Pastoral Post-Apocalypse

One blog I’ve been enjoying recently is Paul Watson’s Artist’s notebook. Paul is currently working on a new series of artworks called Acid Renaissance, and his blog features recent works, accounts of local walks and consideration of his themes.

Paul recently posted about the Post-Apocalyptic Pastoral, a term he found in a goodreads review by ‘Terry from Toronto’. He quotes their definition of the post-apocalyptic pastoral in detail:

in essence we see the world long after a disaster of some kind has laid waste to our society, but while the horror of that event is not diminished, the resulting world is often seen as the chance to start again and perhaps correct the mistakes of the past (or alternately relive them if the tragic mode is adopted). The apocalypse has, in effect, allowed us to start again with a more or less blank slate and thus there is a pervading optimism underneath the implied pessimism of the genre.

I seem to write a lot about the end of the world, cosy catastrophes being a favourite things of mine, or stories where the world ends and nobody notices (a recent example is A Disease of Books at the Horror Zine). As Mark Fisher said and Paul Watson has also quoted, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. An apocalypse seems to be the only way to escape the dreary jobs that blight so many lives while wrecking the environment.

There’s a need for optimistic futures, for a positive vision, as John Higgs argues in his recent book, but Watson also cautions against the back-to-the-land utopias some people promote:

While ditching the technological advancements of the past few hundred years might be survivable (in the short term) for able-bodied people like myself, many people — because of disability, health issues, age, or other reasons — rely on modern technology, 24 hour electricity and heating, transport infrastructure etc. to survive on a daily basis. To pursue some sort of anti-technology pastoral utopia is to deliberately condone the brutal extermination of millions of people. There’s a word for that sort of behaviour.

Last year, at Easter, I was involved in a ritual to end the world (well, immantise the eschaton, but they’re similar). And the point about the end of the world, as Alan Moore has shown in works such as Promethea, is making space for a new, better world. But we need to work to pick the right future.

A world of fast fashion and cheap global air travel is coming to an end, although it’s lasted far longer than I expected. In the new world, there won’t be a billion cattle bred for slaughter, and human lives won’t wasted on commuting and office life. If we survive the arrival of the new world, it may be a kinder, slower place.

Emotions for the new world

It’s very easy to think that human states of mind are universal, rather than a product of our environment; but they change between cultures and times. The concept of privacy, as we understand it now, is an example. It’s not something people would have felt driven to defend for most of history. To quote Wikipedia:

The concept of universal individual privacy is a modern construct primarily associated with Western culture, British and North American in particular, and remained virtually unknown in some cultures until recent times

I found a few interesting links along these lines. A recent list of books about loneliness claimed that that concept was new:

The word comes into common usage around 1800, linked to social change – especially the secularity, alienation and competition produced by modernity. Before then it was solitude that interested writers and philosophers. Solitude could be problematic, but in a landscape forged by God, was one ever alone?

Going further back in time, to the period sometimes called ‘the Dark Ages’, we encounter fundamentally different ways of understanding the world. These were needed to survive in a world that was dangerous, unforgiving and ruled by chance. A recent Night Heron newsletter talked about this in relation to Beowulf, quoting from Tolkien’s writing on the poem:


Night Heron goes on to say:

the worth of defeated valour” is a phrase that will stick with me for a long time, and you can make of it what you will… but i take it to mean… yes, you may be up against a monster that creeps in the night and eats people, you may be up against a dragon far stronger than you, you may be up against the bottomless pit of student debt and climate change anxiety, you may be up against whatever it is you’re up against… and truth be told, you may not overcome it, but the very attempt to overcome it is admirable beyond words. it’s the whole point of life. the life worth living is the one spent fighting against all the Grendels in the world.

It is possible that we will need new emotions to face the horrors of climate change. There have been articles written about the sense of doom people are feeling, and the psychological toll this is taking. A recent article on this subject, ‘If I have no hope for the planet, why am I so determined to have this baby? ‘, took such a grimly hopeful view, an example of this ‘defeated valour’.

When my mother had cancer there was 12 months between her diagnosis and her death. I knew she would die. But knowing that didn’t mean I didn’t spend time with her. Didn’t laugh with her. Find joy and beauty in our relationship. Enjoy the experiences we could have, while we had time. And so it is, we must reach for the pieces of beauty the world still offers us. The clear blue sky when we have it. A child watching a bee feeding in the garden. The sounds of a flock of native birds passing overhead. We, my child-to-be and I, will visit the world on its deathbed.