The Long Descent by John Michael Greer

abandoned the complexity of traditional sacred history for a “fractured” myth that focuses on some small part of the whole.
    The contemporary myths of progress and apocalypse are good examples, the former stressing the hope of future bliss, the latter the threat of catastrophe. The myth of progress, in effect, fast-forwards–Christian sacred history to the thousand years that are supposed to come between the Second Coming and the arrival of the New Jerusalem. The redeeming revelation has already happened in the form of the Scientific Revolution, the allegedly primitive past has been stretched and lopped to make it look like a Vale of Tears, and today’s scientists fill the role of the Church Expectant waiting for the great god Progress to bring Utopia in its own good time. By contrast, the myth of apocalypse fast-forwards the Christian myth to the last days of the Tribulation, and proclaims that some version of the Second Coming is about to overthrow capitalism, civilization, the Republican Party, or whatever other surrogate fills Satan’s role in their mythology.
    There’s some complicated cultural history behind the split between progressive and apocalyptic myth. A little over four centuries ago, at the time of the Reformation, mainstream Christianity effectively capitulated to rational-materialist philosophy and redefined the deeply mythic narratives of the Bible as secular history. Before then, most theologians discussed what the events described in Book of Revelations meant as mystical symbols and analogies; afterward, most of them argued instead about when and how the same events would happen as historical events in the everyday world. Out of the resulting debates came two main schools of thought. 8 The first, the premillennialist position, held that Jesus would return and bring about the Millennium, a thousand-year period of bliss when Christians would rule the world. The other party, the postmillennialists, argued instead that Christians would rule the world for a thousand years of bliss, and after that, Jesus would return.
    The difference may seem about as relevant as the number of angels that can dance on the head of the late Jerry Falwell, but each viewpoint has sweeping implications. If the postmillennial-ists are right, history is on their side, since they’re destined to rule the world for a thousand years before Jesus gets here. Thus post-millennialists tend to believe that things are on the right track and will get better over time until the Millennium arrives. If the pre-millennialists are right, on the other hand, history is on Satan’s side, since it will take nothing less than the personal intervention of Jesus himself to give the Christians their thousand years of world rule. Accordingly, premillennialists tend to believe that things are on the wrong track and will get worse over time until, when everything is as bad as it can get, Jesus shows up, beats the stuffing out of the devil and his minions, and brings on the Millennium.
    Drop the theological fine print from these two viewpoints and you’ve got the myth of progress and the myth of apocalypse in their contemporary forms. Believers in progress argue that industrial civilization is better than any other in history and destined to get better still, so long as we just put enough money into scientific research, or get government out of the way of industry, or whatever else they believe will keep history on its course. Believers in apocalypse argue that industrial civilization is worse than any other in history, and its present difficulties will end in an overnight catastrophe that will destroy it and usher in whatever better world their mythology promises them — a better world in which they will inevitably have the privileged place denied them in this one.
    Both these mythic narratives, in other words, are myths of Utopia. Both promise that the future will bring a much better world than the present; their only