two-pot screamer dot com

Mod parent ultra-insightful. The reason, as this comment [slashdot.org] shows, is that more optimistic eschatological stories tend to be smug, self-satisfied stories about one sector of the population getting to gloat over those that have offended them personally. Consequently, even the optimistic stories are dystopian.

Eschatological myths are really interesting. Some are essentially cyclical stories — ones where you have a cycle of destruction followed by rebirth, which may or may not be repeated ad infinitum. In this category I’d personally put myths such as those of Pythagoreanism, Buddhist eschatology, some cyclical Big-Bang-Big-Crunch theories, and Ragnarok (which, contrary to most versions I seem to see these days, does feature a rebirth after the destruction of the world, though I forget right now whether that’s in Snorri’s version or one of the Edda). Some stories favour an effectively “steady-state” theory, like a lot of animist myths, including Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy (which at one level, at least, is a story about preventing the destruction of everything and the restoration of a utopian steady-state system whereby after death people’s “souls” are reunited with the cosmos in some fashion. I guess Orwell’s 1984 would a dystopic steady-state story (the image of a boot stamping on a human face, forever). But I can’t think of any stories about an ending, as such, that aren’t dystopian for someone, whether it’s a story of one group of people having a happy ending and gloating over the horrors to which their evil enemies are condemned, or a story about everyone and everything coming to an end.

I’m not sure what to recommend for reading on eschatological myths; the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] has some basic info but doesn’t go into any depth.