It describes an enlightening catastrophe that reveals new ways of knowing, a moment of disjunction and disruption that opens up space for rethinking the status quo. As Norman Cohn detailed in his classic 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, millennial movements can profoundly disrupt oppression, persecution, and the status quo. It is precisely this revolutionary spectrum that gives apocalypse its socio-political potential to challenge fatalistic thinking about existential threats, and in particular climate change. But capitalism cannot abide the possibility of upending itself to cope with climate change, despite calming voices that assure us the status quo will protect us from environmental disaster. And if it’s only unveiled for the apocalypse it truly is, we might be able to disrupt our toxic status quo before it’s too late.

Source: National Post September 21, 2017 16:46 UTC