My Quiet Apocalypse

I was out walking my dog when the end of the world landed a few roads away. I didn't see where it had come from and, back then, I didn't know the reasons behind it. But it landed shortly after 8pm on a lazy Sunday. Seeing the distant glow, my dog whimpered. When the noise followed very shortly afterwards, he bounded away, howling in fear, or perhaps pain. I didn't chase after him because the sight and the noise had arrested my attention. I could see a distant volcano of embers showering my town and engulfing it in orange haze. I wandered, feeling strangely ethereal, towards the glow.

As I approached the pandemonium, I saw a man lying on the floor, holding his stomach tightly, trying to contain his own entrails. I gave him my coat to press against his abdomen but he fell down dead shortly after. I picked up my coat and dusted off the mess and put it back on. I walked on.

Fire rained down from my girlfriend's flat but I didn't feel it when it scorched my skin. I walked in, brushing past a red-faced screaming woman holding a blistered baby. We made eye-contact but I looked away. My girlfriend's floor had disappeared and only fire and debris remained so I walked away from the building. I couldn't see the woman, but the baby was lying in the doorway, grasping at the embers as they cascaded around it.

Someone pushed past me and knocked me to the ground. I stood up and brushed myself down, wetting my fingers in the blood of the dead man on my jacket. I tried to wipe my hand off on a nearby car, but it was hot and dusty, so I wiped it on my jeans instead. I saw people taking bottles of wine from a battered off-licence and took one from a small boy as he ran from the shop, past me. He shouted something at me but it was impossible to hear or see what he'd said, so I turned away.

My head felt hazy, and my vision began to seem blurry. I almost tripped over a corpse in the middle of the road. A thick dust descended and made it more difficult to see. Someone ran into me, screaming, red-eyed, wild. I pushed him over, feeling sluggishly aggressive. I stumbled for a few more minutes through the jungle of maddened creatures. I seemed to be going against the flow, but I found my way to the safety of a brick wall, and then a doorway, and I leant against it, coughing. Feeling ever more sluggish, I crouched down, wheezing heavily. And then I sat down and went to sleep.

Last and First Men

From Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, written in 1930, a description of Americans in a fictionalised history of the ages:

For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had serviced science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of ther stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe... Their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away whenever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentiallty a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents.

"Nationalism is an Infantile Disease."

The title of this post comes from Einstein, who was often critical of blind patriotism because of its inevitable descent into jingoistic violence.

Friday is St George's Day, the day which commemorates the patron saint of about half the known world, "as well as a range of professions, organisations, and disease sufferers." (Thanks, Wikipedia). I feel no connection with the man, who appears to be a semi-mythical, barbaric zealot. Since I was born in England, however, he is apparently my patron saint too.

This could be rather daunting, except England doesn't feel the need to wrap itself in flags and blind nationalism in the same way that the USA does. This is a good thing. Patriotism, regardless of its actual worth, has been disfigured by its close association with the worst, lowest elements of society. Crude racism, anti-immigration sentiment, and all-round xenophobia are the cornerstones of English nationalism, and I am glad that St George's Day receives comparatively little attention.

Apart from anything else, patriotism is completely unnecessary and unwarranted. I have no particular love for my country (although I enjoy residing in parts of it, and will happily pay for its upkeep), and I genuinely can't see why anyone else would. What is there to love? Our political system? It's certainly reasonable, and a lot better than many countries'. Our history? Like most other countries', largely shameful. The people? I like a lot of them, but only because of them, not because of their "Englishness". There's nothing inherent to England which means I should love it, any more than I should love one of perhaps ten to twenty of the most developed and progressive nations.

Perhaps, instead, patriotism is just a crude form of gang mentality. We can band together, and feel stronger in unity. I suppose that has a warm, fuzzy feel to it if you, say, decide to support England in the football World Cup (god knows why you'd want to) The downside of this gang mentality is its inevitable decline into right-wing violence. In an arguably enlightened age, I think we can dispense with this, along with the whole despicable relic of nationalism.