apocalypse addiction

an earthquake is imminent in istanbul!

any moment, the forces of evil will unleash their nefarious might through the heart of the soil. the earth shall fold upon itself and death and mayhem and strife will befall the sinners of kostantiniyye, as the three seas rage heaven-high over the city's dwarf skyscrapers, to wash away the human detritus and the human made debris, already decimated to ashes and dust!
no matter that some optimistic geologists claim the mother earth shall not let loose its wrath but merely give a severe warning to the sinners, that the crust of the world shall shake but not a break and open to devour god's favorite children! like any bad tv show, it is the apocalyptic vision that collects the rating. doomsday, everyone knows, shall happen, so it is ordained.

the only mystery is how imminent is the imminent!

so, row after row of titled earth academics hit the media, reading their scientific coffee cups and all but brawling with each other about the magnitude, timing and the malevolence or the benevolence of the inevitable catastrophe.

ok, it is very tempting but i shall refrain from psychoanalyzing the obvious guilt ridden, self devaluative and absolution seeking psychology behind that kind of apocalypse addiction. just suffice to say that as everything else that is ostensibly taken seriously in turkey, the earthquake is actually only marginally serious. no, i am not going to reitirate an umpteenth time how istanbuleotes insistently neglect taking any precautions against the quake whose mere idea frightens them to death. i am reminded of st. francis de lasalle's homily "fear is a greater evil than the evil itself that causes it". what lasalle overlooked is that fear, as every other psychic phenomenon, is functional and the function that necessitates the fear is frequently more important to sustain than to abolish its cause.

turks, especially istanbuleotes will always fear an earthquake, until it occurs but won't do anything about it either, because the pending danger justifies their philosophy - the philosophy that since all in life is ephemeral, for the mortal, everyhting is there for the taking in this short, decidious stay on earth, with no regard for the style, method, norm and ethos of taking.