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"A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianit... more "A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelation". -Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal-The Music and Its Culture ~~~~~~ I'd like to read you some of the best heavy metal lyrics of all time. They go like this:
In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann writes about what he calls "the royal c... more In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann writes about what he calls "the royal consciousness". This is a term he uses to describe the dominant power elite of any era, the ruling class, the 1% (or smaller) who are running and controlling society. Brueggemann notes that one key tool the royal consciousness uses to maintain power is to make the present reality seem like it will never change, that it's a final or permanent one. This destroys hope and stifles the imagination. He writes, "The royal consciousness means to overcome history and therefore by design the future loses its vitality and authority. The present ordering, and by derivation the present regime, claims to be the full and final ordering. This claim means there can be no future that either calls the present into question or promises a way out of it. This insidious form of realized eschatology requires persons to live without hope". 1 We live in a time that is profoundly under the spell of such a royal consciousness, in this case a global capitalist world-system. After the fall of the Berlin Wall it was proclaimed that we were now at "the end of history", with capitalism being the best of all possible worlds. 2 This sort of rhetoric has taken its 1 Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. p.60,59. 2 "The ideal of liberal [capitalist] democracy cannot be improved upon". Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992. p.xiii, xi. And in response to Fukuyama-"How is it that a discourse of this type is sought out by those who celebrate the triumph of liberal toll. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek has famously quipped that the reason there are so many apocalyptic currents in our culture today (in art, film, and so on), is because people can more easily imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism. We are stuck in a time where we literally cannot imagine a different future, a point made by Steve Fraser in his recent book The Age of Acquiescence. Here's how Naomi Klein reconstructs Fraser's argument in a review for the New York Times: This is key to Fraser's thesis. What fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, he argues, was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining -and fighting for -a radically better future.
"A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianit... more "A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelation". -Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal-The Music and Its Culture ~~~~~~ I'd like to read you some of the best heavy metal lyrics of all time. They go like this:
In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann writes about what he calls "the royal c... more In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggemann writes about what he calls "the royal consciousness". This is a term he uses to describe the dominant power elite of any era, the ruling class, the 1% (or smaller) who are running and controlling society. Brueggemann notes that one key tool the royal consciousness uses to maintain power is to make the present reality seem like it will never change, that it's a final or permanent one. This destroys hope and stifles the imagination. He writes, "The royal consciousness means to overcome history and therefore by design the future loses its vitality and authority. The present ordering, and by derivation the present regime, claims to be the full and final ordering. This claim means there can be no future that either calls the present into question or promises a way out of it. This insidious form of realized eschatology requires persons to live without hope". 1 We live in a time that is profoundly under the spell of such a royal consciousness, in this case a global capitalist world-system. After the fall of the Berlin Wall it was proclaimed that we were now at "the end of history", with capitalism being the best of all possible worlds. 2 This sort of rhetoric has taken its 1 Brueggemann, Walter. The Prophetic Imagination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001. p.60,59. 2 "The ideal of liberal [capitalist] democracy cannot be improved upon". Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992. p.xiii, xi. And in response to Fukuyama-"How is it that a discourse of this type is sought out by those who celebrate the triumph of liberal toll. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek has famously quipped that the reason there are so many apocalyptic currents in our culture today (in art, film, and so on), is because people can more easily imagine the end of the world then the end of capitalism. We are stuck in a time where we literally cannot imagine a different future, a point made by Steve Fraser in his recent book The Age of Acquiescence. Here's how Naomi Klein reconstructs Fraser's argument in a review for the New York Times: This is key to Fraser's thesis. What fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, he argues, was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining -and fighting for -a radically better future.