Last Days, Last Words
[Here’s a Desdemona-approved doom essay, via Guy McPherson.]
By John Rember
14 January 2012 […] I’ve decided it’s better to be an honest observer of a dark world than to make up cheery lies for people desperate to spend their lives in culturally-prescribed illusion. If I wanted to make up lies I would have gone into advertising and made a lot more money and had a secretary who looked like Christina Hendricks.
So I’m exploring the end of this world as I see it. I don’t know if anyone will read my writing in a hundred years, or if anyone will be able to read in a hundred years. I don’t even know if anyone will be alive in a hundred years, unless it’s bacteria hanging out in hydrothermal reservoirs a mile beneath the surface of the earth. But if bacteria can read, I’d like them to understand that in the last few decades of human existence, one of those humans looked around himself, observed carefully and thought about what he observed, and wrote down the results of that thinking — dark existential jokes, mostly, which I’m pretty sure deep-biosphere bacteria prefer above all other forms of humor. Other than the jokes, there’s a certain last will and testament quality to what I’m writing, not because I’m planning on dying anytime soon, but because there’s a lot to elegize these days. […]
Last Days, Last Words via Nature Bats Last
Thanks for posting this. It reminded me of what might be possible in the personal essay, and "of the vast potential for non-didactic exposition — and the breadth of variety open to me.
"I’ll pick back up that faintly-glowing torch with more alacrity, now, because of your essay."
Hope I actually do that — but regardless, what a wonderful essay, and thanks for the pointer.