AVOIDING THE COMING APOCALYPSE
I read an article on the magazine Wired’s website this morning about how Peter Thiel, a billionaire supporter of Trump came by his beliefs. It is quite a story and it also explains how Vance came to his Christian conversion. For both of them it was a complicated intellectual process influenced greatly by a couple of intellectuals with similar and very dissimilar beliefs. All of these guys are very intelligent guys trying to figure out the trajectory of human history. I had never heard of any of these people before or any of their ideas. It all sounds a little nuts to me without really understanding what they are talking about.
Their sense of the coming doom for mankind, the Apocalypse, is caused by the coming of the Antichrist who will conquer, unify, the world just before the apocalypse. It is a variant of Biblical interpretation.
A French-American theorist Rene Girard who combines the theories of the Nazi, Carl Schmitt, who felt that Hitler was the antichrist preparing for the end of times and the Austrian, Wolfgang Palaver, who believes that only following Jesus is the way out of this coming destruction of the world.
Don’t rely on me for an explanation because I don’t understand this at all. But what I get out of the article is that somehow all of these men, including Vance, who is guided by Thiel, believe that the end of the world is coming through the power of the Antichrist who brings about one world, one government, one United Nations caused by liberal beliefs. Mixed into this somehow is the need to have scapegoats who unite people in nation states which will somehow prevent the Antichrist from taking over.
All of these guys are very serious, very intelligent guys who intuitively believe that based on the Bible that we are headed for destruction and are looking for a way out. They must feel it in their bones and believe it. To me it sounds nuts. But a great number of Christians, particularly fundamentalist Christions, believe that the Apocolypse is coming any day now which is tied up somehow with the survival of Israel and the threat that technology brings. Thiel believes that in trying to escape global warming and the threat of AI through uniting the world in peaceful ways that well meaning people are bringing on the end of times.
But what I get from the article is that Vance and others are not stupid and are not trying to con us with stories of Haitians eating dogs, they are intelligent serious people with a different intuitive response to the world than I have.
Read the article and see what you think.
https://apple.news/ASkA50fXCSq2qgnAMjnbmPw.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 