Apocalypse ciao: Let the end times roll

From Virginia Heffernan's article in Mother Jones:

...Hardcore collapsitarians, these writers purport, agitate for total economic downfall and universal joblessness; they scoff at mere predictions of catastrophe and apotheosis, demanding their doom, ashes, and phoenix-rise right away. They'd like to see the dilapidated systems of America's beleaguered economy—finance, for one, but also retail—burn to the ground so that something new, brighter, and more durable might appear. These old ways, they contend, will self-destruct because of intrinsic design flaws, particularly the creaky command-and-control structures of the pre-Internet era. At lunch, Becker name-checked All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman's modernist critique.

To its adherents, collapsitarianism suggests a giddy liberation from hope, from futile shoring up of ailing economies like Detroit's and the Sunbelt's, from bailouts and stimulus plans and climate change and toxic-asset recovery. On board are said to be Luddites, anarchists, survivalists, green types who see collapse as our comeuppance, critics of American exceptionalism, and even financial-sector employees who just want it all over already.

As Muller ticked off the four sectors he expected­—no, hoped—would disintegrate, I felt drunk. Finance, insurance, manufacturing, retail: R.I.P. (What? No journalism? I took a deep breath.) Partly I was high on the mere mention of collapse, that unspeakable notion—and the tantalizing prospect that it might be advocated. I imagined Victorians felt this way hearing about psychoanalysis: Sex, the feared thing, could finally be not only spoken of, but actually embraced. "It's good news," Muller explained. "We're squeezing the industrial era out of our system. Perceived value is collapsing, leaving only real value."

Like many, I do my fair share of fantasizing about sweeping away the phonies. Yet the "real value" line also recalled the rhetoric of goldbugs at the close of the 19th century; they wanted to purge the nation of postwar fiat cash and eliminate fluctuations in the currency, along with America's profligate ways. They were rich, mostly, and imagined big money-supply contractions that would keep stacks of gold bars expensive and out of reach, so that only responsible, dignified people—high-hatted men like themselves—could get at them. A moralizing and ungenerous note sounded in the SXSWers' end-of-world talk. People with devalued dollars and flimsy condos, after all, hardly deserve to perish for their illusions. But I bit back my reservations to bask in the thrill of a new idea.

Becker persuaded Muller to cover his lunch, and he tucked into a massive chicken-fried steak. Collapsitarianism amused him, but he really wanted to talk about their company, Get Satisfaction—how impressively capitalized it was, how it let people swap info about companies and allowed companies to talk directly to their customers.

Muller persisted. We have to let collapse come, he told me, and even nudge it along. "If you see Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall, go ahead and give him a good shove," he elaborated later. Once all the rotten and fragile stuff falls to pieces, hardier and healthier and more reasonable ways of organizing experience will emerge, he promised. Collapse sounds scary, but Muller considers it a desirable stage en route to a "more delightful, more sustainable world." ...

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