Endgame Earth: Clinging to Optimism

As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the son of man. They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day when Noah went into the ark and the flood came and destroyed them all.

(Luke 17:26–27)

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NAGG: […] (Raconteur's voice.) An Englishman, needing a pair of striped trousers in a hurry for the New Year festivities, goes to his tailor who takes his measurements. (Tailor's voice.) "That's the lot, come back in four days, I'll have it ready." Four days later. (Tailor's voice.) "So sorry, come back in a week, I've made a mess of the seat." Good, that's all right, a neat seat can be very ticklish. A week later. (Tailor's voice.) "Frightfully sorry, come back in ten days. I've made a hash of the crutch." Good, can't be helped, a snug crutch is always a teaser. Ten days later. (Tailor's voice.) "Dreadfully sorry, come back in a fortnight, I've made a balls of the fly." Good, at a pinch, a smart fly is a stiff proposition. […] (Raconteur's voice.) Well, to make it short, the bluebells are blowing and he ballockses the buttonholes. (Customer's voice.) "God damn you to hell, Sir, no it's indecent, there are limits! In six days, do you hear me, six days, God made the world. Yes Sir, no less Sir, the WORLD. And you are not bloody well capable of making me a pair of trousers in three months!" (Tailor's voice, scandalized.) "But my dear Sir, my dear Sir, look—(disdainful gesture, disgustedly) —at the world—(pause.) —and look—(loving gesture, proudly)—at my TROUSERS!"

—Samuel Beckett, Endgame (1958:22–23)

There's a lot going on in Beckett's parable from Endgame. The world the tailor disparages, the world God made in six days then turned over to human beings, is polluted, its climate warming, deserts expanding, forests chopped down, mineral and liquid resources wantonly extracted, glaciers melting, seas acidifying and rising. The human population increases while millions of other species go extinct. But Beckett speaks also of a second world, those trousers, a world we feel pinched in, needing many revisions, but perfectible. A world of our own conceiving, gestating, rehearsing, and performing: artful.

Tragedy's theme is the rule of law, and from that, obedience to properly constituted authority: Destiny, the fates, God, nature, human government. People get in big trouble when they go against the law. From Oedipus and Antigone to the collective catastrophes of global warming, overcrowding, and mass extinction. Today's tragic problem is that the constituted authority of nature is ignored or assaulted by the constituted authority of governments and corporations. Comedy operates from a different premise. No authority is "properly constituted" because power corrupts. Authority is exposed and mocked, turned upside down. Laws need to be broken, a lot depends on accident and chance (not quite the same). Gods play dice and/or descend in machines to reverse the inevitable. Youth defeats old age, wins the endgame, and is happy. Which world do we live in? Both, and at the same time.

Hollywood screenwriter Charles MacArthur and Charlie Chaplin were discussing comedy. MacArthur: How could I make a person, walking down Fifth Avenue, slip on a banana peel and still get a laugh? Do I show first the banana peel, then the person approaching, then she slips? Or do I show the person first, then the banana peel, and then she slips? Chaplin: Neither. You show the person approaching; then you show the banana peel; then you show the person and the banana peel together; then she steps over the banana peel and disappears down a manhole (adapted from Fadiman and Bernard [1985] 2000:112). So are we, who've collectively stepped over plagues, famines, and nuclear war, to vanish into the consequences of our ingenuity?

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The endgame is an old story. Seers, prophets, and crazies have predicted the apocalypse untold times—by fire, flood, rapture, cosmic collision, you name it. This time...