myth building- apocalypses.

And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
                     - 4 non blondes

This post is an observation about mythologies, which I expect to be useful for contriving mythologies for a gameworld.

I've already written some about apocalypses, especially concerning millenarianism in American culture.
But millenarianism isn't restricted to one time or place, or even one form of ideology. Belief in the "end times" is generally associated with religious outlooks. But it seems that even political or ethnic ideologies have some notion of this. That would account for pretty much all ideologies.

Ideologies form their own views on history, that is, they customize a mythology. This mythological history would naturally interpret past events. And it would also develop conjectures about the future and the direction history is going in.

Basically, no matter what your outlook, whether you are Jew, Gentile, Hopi, Sioux, Republican, Anarchist, Burner, Evangelist, Progressive, Positivist, Luddite or Flower-Child, you probably have some notion that something is going to happen. And probably soon.

People imagine this thing differently. They have different words for it: apocalypse, rapture, the technological singularity, when the Shit Hits the Fan, The Transcendental Object at the End of Time, The Age of Aquarius, The Revolution. Ragnarok.
And then there's the one where the internet stops working and we all don football pads and grab our ARs and kill eachother for the last bottle of coke. Plot twist: the last coke will be warm and taste awful.

It seems to me that all these various apocalypses hold Anxiety as their common origin.
It is uncertainty or a perceived threat which causes people to make these guesses that something serious is going to happen.
The nature of the anxiety reflects on the principle concerns of the rest of the mythology.
For instance:
Who will be saved, who will be damned.
Environmental concerns or concerns over limited resources.
Concerns about group-identity or social position.
Civil liberties or political power.

The term "Apocalypse" has come to mean the end of the world as we know it. But in the original sense, it meant a revelation. Apocalyptic literature was a genre of religious writing in which people wrote about the bizarre visions they had while fasting or in trance. In this state, they believed that God was revealing things to them. So in a more basic sense, an apocalypse is how-things-are-going-to-turn-out.

In this view, when the apocalypse happens, questions are answered, things turn out, and the anxiety is resolved. That is why people are fascinated by the idea. It is appealing in a sense.

People take for granted that a mythology will have a creation story. But don't forget that they almost always have some future which they expect as well.