Why we love the post-apocalypse...in media

Apocalypse is generally something to be feared. If faced with it, most of us would be terrified beyond measure. But there is something appealing about it as a setting in entertainment media, particularly in film in video games, the essence of which is that it represents freedom from drudgery and hopelessness in contemporary life.

That may seem a bit counter-intuitive, as apocalypse - or more accurately: post-apocalypse - implies living in a wretched world devastated by some kind of man-made or even natural disaster that renders the Earth as hyper-dangerous and perhaps even toxic. But that is not the whole story.

With apocalypse, there is a presumed background of anarchy that goes with the destruction of government and societal institutions. There is no pressure of work or career. You don't have to go to the dull cubicle hell every day. Your wealthier friends with better houses and fancier cars are suddenly on a level playing field. If you see your boss after the apocalypse, you can tell him to f-off with essentially no repercussions. Another angle on the appeal of apocalyptic settings for the jaded, disgruntled aspect all of us have somewhere within us is this sense that apocalypse is the universe's revenge on those in power in society whom we feel have screwed us over.

Picture it: every day you go to work and your boss treats you like a dog. He yells at you for being late. He reviews your powerpoint presentation and tweaks it, making it worse. Then when he presents it to the management team and they hate it, he says it was all your fault. Or if they like it, he takes all credit. When you complain to his boss, she looks back you like you're crazy and lectures you about your bad attitude and how you are not a team player. But when the bombs fall and society is devastated and somehow the three of you survive, you encounter them in the rubble and it is immediately known that their precious powerpoints and management meetings are worthless. Their unfair assessments of how you lack real talent and have zero growth potential are meaningless. In that moment you could exact any kind of revenge on them with no consequence. It is as if the universe crept up and said to your bosses, "Oh yeah? Well screw you."

Now this may be an extreme picture, but everyone experiences moments in contemporary life where they want to scream and lash out at the world. When someone dangerously cuts you off in traffic you curse them and give them the finger. When you are taking a walk around the neighborhood after dinner with your family on a nice summer evening and someone in her BMW with a her shitzu on her lap while simultaneously talking on the cell phone and smoking a cigarette rolls through a stop sign and doesn't notice you in the crosswalk, you wish there was a cop there to pull her over.

These ordinary moments of malaise against society build up in our inner beings, and the apocalypse provides a path for you to release the pain and frustration they bring. The apocalypse, while a horrible reality if we were ever faced with it, allows for freedoms we would otherwise never experience. Sure, it comes with death and destruction, disease and hellish scarcity of food and resources, but in those moments when you boss trashes your work, when you step in your neighbors dogshit on your lawn, when telemarketers call you for the fifth time during dinner, you start to think of fantastical moments of the worst possible revenge on these people that you would and could never do.

These are not pleasant concepts to ponder as revenge is ultimately self defeating, even if made possible by the apocalypse. The new age teachings of the 21st centry, such as in Eckhart Tolle's masterpiece A New Earth, teaches us all the trappings that such egocentric revenge condemns us to. But even if we are transformed beings who seek understanding, wisdom and communication between all, we still get those impulses that tell us we have been wronged when we get cut off in traffic, step in our neigbor's dog shit or have our powerpoint unfairly slammed because your boss has the emotional development of a preteen. Everyone has their limits of patience and escapist apocalyptic media transports us to a world where revenge is ours and we are free from the mundane tyranny of our lives.

In essence, this is why violent media and video games are so popular. It's not because people have a desire to cause death and destruction in real life, but rather because they know they can't. The apocalyptic setting empowers people to be survivalists and live off their wits. It is the great leveler of playing fields in life where the investment bankers and corporate executives and transactional lawyers no longer hold an upper edge that money gives them.

If you think about every shooter game you have played, all them have some context that allows for the player character to run around killing everything in sight. War is a good one, or alien invasion, or some other disaster where you are being pursued to the death. While such games have rules even within their apocalyptic settings, it is still that general sense of freedom from typical societal rules that is so empowering. This is the inherent appeal of most violent video games.