By Renata Salecl

For some time now, people worldwide have developed a particular fascination with the idea of the catastrophe which will bring an end to society as we know it. According to the Pew Foundation survey, at the end of last year, 39% of Americans believed that the world was ending. In 2019, US-Danish researchers led by Michael Bang Petersen interviewed 6000 people who were passionately spreading fake news and conspiracy theories on social media. The researchers noticed that many people do not believe in what they spread online, but they got enjoyment from their messages being liked by their followers and angry comments by those who disagreed with them. However, among these people about a quarter expressed a desire to see the world as we know it go to hell. For many, the aim was to cause chaos by spreading fake news and conspiracy theories or, like the famous Joker movie, to dream of the world as we know it burning down. These people often fantasised that in the rubble of this world, a small group of survivors could begin to create a new, better world.

This research was done just before the pandemic. Now that we have gone through a long and deadly pandemic and are witnessing wars in so many parts of the world, it looks like these desires for the destruction of the world are being realized.

In 2023, just before the elections in Argentina, many voters expressed the desire to gamble on Javier Milei, nicknamed “el loco” (the madman), when he revealed his plans to reset the Argentinian society. For many Argentinians, having a president who would tear down the existing institutions was preferable to the status quo – the continuation of the perpetual crisis they lived in during the last 20 years.

While the US did not experience as extreme inflation and severe economic crises as in Argentina just before the 2024 presidential elections, there was a similarity in wishing for a reset of the society for many voters. Disruption was a better gamble than a status quo.

Just before the US elections, the British newspaper, The Guardian, reported how on the online platform Telegram, various Neo-Nazi groups discussed the need for something to happen so that people would stop living in “this shithole” forever. Thus, one person said: “I just want something to happen so a bunch of us can die trying, at least.” “Collapse is how we win,” said another, and a third stressed the need for acceleration and the civil war to start. The collapse narrative dominated these discussions. Some of the extremist ideologues were also opposed to elections per se, and others questioned whether it might be better for them if Kamala Harris won the election since many more people might, in this case, join the ranks of the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. However, many felt it might not be too bad if Trump wins and that they would have a more leisurely ride during his presidency. But most of all, people who were discussing the collapse of society were talking about the need to arm themselves and be prepared to die in the civil war they expected to happen.

Karl Marx, in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, talks a lot about how the goal of the capitalist economic system is the “unhappiness of society.” As Marx says, “even in the condition of society most favourable to the worker, the inevitable result for the worker is overwork and premature death, decline to a mere machine, a bond servant of capital, which piles up dangerously over-against him, more competition, and for a section of the workers starvation or beggary.” After he elaborates this point, he distinguishes between three types of misery: in a declining state of society, we have increasing misery of the worker; “in an advancing state—misery with complications; and in a fully developed state of society—static misery.”

Marx then concludes that political economy advances the proposition that “the proletarian, the same as any horse, must get as much as will enable him to work. It does not consider him when he is not working, as a human being; but leaves such consideration to criminal law, to doctors, to religion, to the statistical tables, to politics and to the workhouse beadle.”

In his book Not Working, British psychoanalyst Josh Cohen points out that he nowadays encounters more and more patients who want the world or themselves to stop. Some patients talk about the bliss of catatonic exhaustion, the festive morning of the weekend, staring at a single line of a newspaper until it acquires a complete emptiness of the Buddhist mantra. Cohen notes that people are caught between the compulsion to do as much as possible and the desire to do nothing. For many office workers, working hours seem like a constant run between work and browsing the internet, wondering which of the twenty-three versions of white T-shirts they would buy, watching irrelevant movies on YouTube, or passionately consuming social media. Many people thus go through the day in a state of apathy, dreaminess or even indifference.

But then it looks as if these people are easily awoken when they engage in heated debates on social media or when they start enjoying engaging with the populist discourse, which they might not even identify with.

Lacanian notions of desire in jouissance become handy in understanding this logic. As Lacan explained in his analysis of Freud’s theory of dreams, neurotic subjects often find a particular satisfaction in keeping their desires unsatisfied. Although rationally people might claim they want to have something, unconsciously, they might do everything not to satisfy their desires. In addition, people might find jouissance in self-destruction or fantasies about the possible end of the world.

In the last years, there has also been an increase of the discussions about the end of the world among religious groups in the US, especially among the evangelican christians. In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud argued that religion serves as a collective neurosis for humanity, a way to channel and mitigate the inherent tension between individual desires and the demands of society. By sublimating primal urges into religious activities, individuals not only find a socially acceptable outlet for these impulses but also gain the psychological comfort of belonging and the illusion of an ultimate protector in the form of God.

While building on Freudian theories, Lacan offered a different perspective on sublimation, which can be extended to the realm of religion. From a Lacanian standpoint, religious beliefs and practices can be seen as attempts to fill the fundamental lack or void in human existence with something that transcends the symbolic order of language and society. In this sense, religion can provide a way for individuals to confront and engage with the Real, an unrepresentable realm beyond the Imaginary and the Symbolic.

However, in the link between sublimation and religion, we should not forget the power of the death drive. In an important way, Lacan has linked this creatio ex nihilo with the destructive nature of the death drive. The latter is “a creationist sublimation, and it is linked to that structural element which implies that, as soon as we have to deal with anything in the world appearing in the form of the signifying chain, there is somewhere – though certainly outside the natural world – which is the beyond of that chain, the ex nihilo on which it is founded and is articulated as such.” The death drive is a drive of destruction that undermines the social symbolic space; however, linked to it is a will to make a new start, a start from the point of nothing. Lacan also points out that the death drive “is to be situated in the historical domain, it is articulated at a level that can only be defined as a function of the signifying chain.”

Sublimation, by elevating an object to the status of the Thing, offers a creative way for the subject to relate to the fundamental lack or void that characterizes human desire. It is a way of transforming the death drive’s potentially destructive push towards jouissance into something that can be expressed within the symbolic realm, albeit in a way that challenges and transfigures it.

Researchers Dov Cohen, Emily Kim, and Nathan W. Hudson examined the link between sublimation and religion. These researchers looked at the variations of sublimation among different religious groups. They concluded that Protestants (compared with Catholics and Jews) were more likely to minimise troublesome effects and displace them into creative work.

Creative work, however, does not necessarily only mean arts, it can also involve socially mobilising activities, which might serve particular political purposes. Among Protestant Christians, a particular type of creative work can be observed among the fundamentalist evangelicals who, in the last years, have been very active in propagating the end of the world. In the USA, among these evangelicals, more than sixty per cent believe that our world will come to an end quite soon.[1]

America’s large evangelical churches not only believe in the end of the world, they are also actively praying for that end to come. One of the most famous evangelical ministers, who is said to have over ten million followers in his church, John Hagee, likes to create colossal gatherings where his sermons look like rock concert types of performances where the priest in a trans-like state preaches about the fact that we are living our last days on earth. He suggests also the possibility that there will also be a second coming of Christ which will allow the Christians to go to heaven.

Evangelicals believe that Jerusalem must be under Jewish control for the Second Coming of Christ to be a possibility.[2] This is a crucial prerequisite for Christians to go to heaven at the end of the world.[3] Since total Jewish control of the Holy Land can only be achieved by driving the Palestinians out, many American evangelicals support the warfare politics of the current Israeli government.[4]

Although Hagee has been known for many anti-Semitic statements[5] in the past, at a certain point, he made a U-turn and, with the help of the organisation Christians United for Israel, started financially supporting Jewish settlers in their occupation of the Palestinian territories in the West Bank. The idea is that before Christ returns, the Jews should control the whole Holy Land. However, when the Christ comes, the Jews will, in the beliefs of the evangelicans, need to accept Christian religion or might end up in hell.[6]

Evangelicals waiting for the end of the world are quick to interpret any situation as a sign that Armageddon is coming. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine were such signs for them. Since the last major conflict predicted by fundamentalist evangelicals will take place in the Middle East, the current war in Gaza is also seen as a sign that apocalyptic predictions are now coming true and that Christ is about to return. “The last days are coming,” predicted Texas pastor Jack Graham in his sermon a year ago.[7]

End-of-the-world debates, or discussions surrounding apocalyptic scenarios and existential threats to humanity, intersect with psychoanalytic theory in profound and multifaceted ways. These debates can evoke a range of psychological responses, from denial and repression to anxiety and sublimation, reflecting broader psychoanalytic themes such as the death drive, the notion of the Real, and the defence mechanisms employed by the ego.

However, one should also remember the political power of the end-of-the-world stories. The late American professor of Islamic studies, Barbara Freyer Stowasser, in comparing the perceptions of the end of the world in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, found that each religion likes to use end-of-the-world debates for secular political purposes. At the same time, religions also have elements of superiority in their messages, which have also been strongly linked throughout history to the political interests of each country. Just as eschatological categories are often imposed on a particular political and social reality, this reality is also reflected in religious visions of the end of the world. Freyer Stowasser points out that this happens especially in situations of vulnerability and alienation when collective anxiety opens the door to privileging a particular religion and asserting its superiority over others.

In the psychoanalytic circles, there has been a debate in the last years whether the concept of sublimation has changed from the time Freud and Lacan conceptualised it. In the past, sublimation was perceived as something that helps people to deal with the conflicting feelings, for example, when they are both anxious about death and destruction and enjoy fantasising about it. In popular discourse, sublimation was often apprehended positively as something that can lead to the production of art, literature, and other cultural artefacts, can encourage people to engage with science, or help people find an outlet for their conflicting feelings in religious practices.

Italian psychoanalyst Rosella Valdrè in her book On Sublimation questioned whether sublimation is talked about less today because the possibilities of sublimation in contemporary humankind have drastically—and dramatically—diminished, both in the patients undergoing analysis and in society. Valdrè sees one reason for that in the evolution of psychopathological cases. She thus points out that in contemporary clinical work one observes fewer cases of classical neuroses and more pathologies of the borderline or narcissistic spectrum, whose capability and possibility to represent, to create symbols and metaphors is compromised or even absent, which might have an effect on sublimation. The second reason for the diminished power of the sublimation, Valdrè sees in contemporary subjectivity, which, unlike the individual of the twentieth century, is marked by the tendency to immediate satisfaction and discharge: “The discontent that social and civil life implies, the sacrifice of enjoyment and pleasure, is often avoided today; the contemporary subject is terrified of renunciation and seems to be speciously seeking immediate gratification…” Valdrè concludes that to understand the cultural complexity today and try to entangle what role sublimation plays today, psychoanalysis must turn to other sources, such as philosophy, sociology, and economic doctrine, on top of literature and art.

The rise of the pathologies of the borderline and narcissistic spectrum has, however, not only changed the nature of sublimation, but it has also opened up new avenues of jouissance where identification with the cruel master and self-sacrifice play an important role. One wonders what Marx and Freud would say about today’s jouissance offered to people willing to forgo payment to serve as new executioners. A few days ago, Elon Musk, who will, with Vivek Ramaswamy, co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, announced on X that he is searching for “high-IQ” individuals willing to work long hours to join the task force which will cut costs of the government. Musk and Ramaswamy will personally look at the CVs of the top 1% of applicants who need to be willing to work without pay. The jouissance from being chosen by a cruel master and going all out in doing the cutting, slashing, and firing goes beyond anything money can buy.

Read and watch the Marx 4/13 seminar here.

Notes

[1] In their documentary Praying for Armageddon (2023), Norwegian filmmaker Tonje Hessen Schei and American filmmaker Michael Rowley analyse the influence of fundamentalist evangelicals on US congress members and senators and point out that without the support of these churches, no Republican presidential candidate today can hope to win an election. According to some estimates, more than 100 US Congress members have declared themselves members of these churches.

[2] Philip Bump, “Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy,” The Washington Post, May 14, 2028, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/half-of-evangelicals-support-israel-because-they-believe-it-is-important-for-fulfilling-end-times-prophecy/

[3] Sarah Posner, “The dispiriting truth about why many evangelical Christians support Israel,” MSNBC, October 22,2023, available at

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/truth-many-evangelical-christians-support-israel-rcna121481

[4] Jaclyn Diaz, “Conservative Christians are lending support — and cash — to Israel at war,” NPR, May 26, 2024, available athttps://www.npr.org/2024/05/26/1244131702/conservative-christians-are-lending-support-and-cash-to-israel-at-war

[5] Emily Temkin, “Why televangelist John Hagee was a shocking March for Israel speaker,” MSNBC, November 15,2023, available at https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/john-hagee-march-for-israel-antisemitism-rcna125291

[6] See the documentary “Till Kingdom Come” (2020) by Israeli filmmaker Maya Zinshtein. Also, David M. Halbfinger, “American Evangelicals, Israeli Settlers and a Skeptical Filmmaker,” New York Times, February 26, 2021, available athttps://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/movies/american-evangelicals-israeli-settlers-documentary.html

[7] Ruth Graham and Anna Betts, “For American Evangelicals Who Back Israel, ‘Neutrality Isn’t an Option’,” New York Times, October 15, 2013, available at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/15/us/american-evangelicals-israel-hamas.html