It's the End of the World as We Know it (Keep Calm and Carry On)

It’s the End of the World as We Know It (Keep Calm and Carry On)

“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel” – Horace Walpole

                In a recent letter to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a writer opined that, despite evidence to the contrary, the world DID indeed end on December 21, 2012 as the Mayans had predicted.  As proof, he went on to list all of the ills facing mankind, including global warming, food shortages, mass shootings, war in the Middle East, rising income equality etc. etc.

                I chortled, as I read his letter, not because any of his examples were of a light-hearted matter per se, but simple because that list of disasters, real or imagined, could have been written at the end of any year, in any age of Man. If all we see around us is impending doom, then perhaps all we want to do is actually hasten that end?  

At the dawning of the second millennium in the year 999 AD , it was documented that our agrarian forebears in Europe, who were convinced that world was coming to an end on the stroke of midnight, didn’t bother to plant crops for the coming spring in Y1K. The Earth, which apparently didn't keep its eye on the human calendar or sundial , failed to implode as confidentially predicted.  Unfortunately for many however, their world did indeed end the following year, since without crops to harvest, they simply starved to death.  With the hindsight of a thousand years we can smile at the irony of what proved to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So just why do people secretly wish that the end of the world would happen on their watch?  I have a number of unproven theories about these doomsday prophets and their fixation on the end times:   1. Narcissism (the world cannot possibly go on without ME) 2. Schadenfreude (a desire to delight in the impending misfortunes of all those happy rich successful people you secretly hate) 3. Religious dogma (my holy book says that it is going to happen – so mark the calendar!)   Scientific curiosity (how DID that asteroid impact kill all the Dinosaurs?)   4. Gullibility (I read it on the Internet, so it must be true – isn’t it?)  5. Justified Apathy (If the end of the world is coming, why get off of the couch and actually do something?)

Humankind has managed to get itself out of some jolly tough scrapes in the past, so why should the 2010’s be any different, I might ask?   Have we not clawed our way back up the cliff, fiscal or otherwise on many occasions?   Did we not square our shoulders, push our chests out and put our collective noses to the grindstone in order to solve intractable problems of the past?   Yes of course we did, so how can the end of the world be ever so (repeatedly) nigh? 

The answers, as I have suggested above, are varied and mostly vainglorious, however the modern day soothsayer has the advantage of a voracious media to help spread the apocalypse.  In the Middle Ages, it would be just the local loony wandering around the village announcing that the end times were at hand.  And when I lived in London, it was a tradition on a Sunday afternoon to go down to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park and listen to the assorted “prophets” describe the coming annihilation from their upturned milk crates. Now of course, nut jobs of every stripe have access to social media in order to convince the on-line populace that their worldly days are done.  Why bother to join a cult or march down the street with a sandwich board, when one can simple Tweet the details of the coming Armageddon (in 140 characters or less) from the comfort of one’s own bunker?

At the end of the day, those that see the end of the world in every rainstorm, territorial squabble, or face in the clouds, are doomed, like the Ancient Mariner, to wander around Cyber Space with a dead Albatross around their necks, making life miserable for the rest of us. I will leave you with this quote from a very perceptive man as to the nature of impending disaster. 

"I've suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened."
-Mark Twain

More from the Albion Bulldog soon.