It’s the end of the world as we know it
Some time ago the band R.E.M. put out a song with the above name. At the time I thought it sounded pretty hip, yet I doubt I understood the full meaning of the lyrics. Years later I still do not. I could go onto google or wikipedia and find out I guess, but I regress.
So I was talking to my brother yesterday and he told me of this fellow down in the states who is claiming that the world will end on May 21st, 2011. I just checked my iCalendar and I appear to have the day off. I read in the Edmonton Journal that he made a similar prediction back in the 1990s but had made some miscalculations. I think I am going to hold off on trying to surf 20 foot waves in Maui until I get better. In all seriousness these kinds of claims are humorous, disturbing, and thought-provoking all at the same time.
Let me begin by exploring the first of my three-pronged claim. I find what this fellow said humorous because it seems like every so often a wing nut makes a claim that the world is going to end and there always seems to be a group of willing followers who take to the streets to warn and push their ideas on others. All the while they quit their jobs, devote their life’s savings to the cause, and wake up the day after the faux doomsday to realize their said prophet forgot to carry a one during their calculations or mistranslated “death of everything that we know” when it should have been “just another normal day”. I shake my head at this recurring phenomenon because nothing happened on the year 2000 and I am sure the Mayans just decided they needed to stop printing future additions of their calendar and arbitrarily picked the year 2012 to stop. This trend has also been true of the countless other claims that the world is going to end.
This leads me to my next point of how disturbing the consequences the actions of some of these believers have had to endure. Sure I believe grown-ups need to deal with their decisions and think about whether or not racking up their credit cards, handing in a letter of resignation at their job, or giving up on their Atkins diet is a good idea, yet something remains unsettling about it all. I do not hear of the well-to-do, those who can restart their lives with relative ease should they be wrong, and those who have an over-abundance of material wealth as being the likely followers of these so-called prophets. No, it tends to be the impressionable, those from humbler backgrounds, and those whose lives who can not afford to be wrong about a miscalculated Armageddon. It is hard for me to believe the creators of such elaborate faulty ideas have more to their moral character than someone milking a pyramid scheme, the King of Ethiopia who keeps on asking me to email him my personal banking information so that I can share in his family’s wealth, or the con who tries to steal an old person’s life’s savings. It’s true, I do not think highly of these people and it is puzzling why these men (usually they are men aren’t they?) are given air and other media time OR are not treated like criminals. That’s probably the most contentious thing I have written so far (I assume) because these oracles most often exploit some kind of religious connection and I can’t very well comment on someone’s religious freedoms now can I? Well... I just did. Not because I have anything wrong with religion per se. I have a problem with someone who plays off how much religion means to some people. If anything, I feel sorry for those that their connection to their faith is so strong that they get brought down by the evilness of these people and at the end of it all they are the ones left to pick up the pieces and rebuild their lives when said prophecy turns out to be falsified. The flip side to this point is that I am not religious (spiritual, but not religious). If the narrow guidelines for belonging to the rapture club are as narrow as some would have me believe then I am stuck here to live out some kind of Book of Eli/The Road existence. That would suck. Yet, I do not believe that the creator of us all works like that (that’s another mini essay all on its own). Each of our own personal belief systems has things that work and that are fallacious. For all any of us know some extinct aboriginal population from central Australia 3000 years ago may have had “the answer” and it may have been lost or ignored and the 7 billion of us all here now are all 100% wrong. In all likelihood none of us knows for certain how everything and anything works. Though the amount we know about our world expands rapidly everyday, there are still enormous mysteries here on our little spec of a planet floating around this great cosmos. I am sure the further we explore outside of our own backyard, so to speak, the number of questions we ask will exponentially outweigh the number of answers we find. Cool eh?! So if you believe next weekend you will develop the ability to levitate and will look down at me trying to fight off the hooligans trying to steal my canned peaches and firewood, well... good for you. I hope that works for you. With that pedestal you are sitting on looking down at me you already have a head start. Do me a favor and please keep those particular thoughts to yourself. What I really think you should be thinking about is the realities I will talk about in the next part.
Reality (enters room): This is the thought-provoking part... Solar flares, natural disasters, stray asteroids and comets, environmental catastrophes, food shortages, wars, terrorism, resource scarcity, biological weapons, diseases, and the content of some horror and science fiction movies (aliens, zombies, and robots who turn on their makers), these things, any one of them, or combination of one or more of them, at any given moment could change our lives in such a way that the apocalypse, armageddon, or whatever you’d like to call it would appear to be upon us. Though some of them seem, and maybe are, farfetched, they are, at least of some of them, not well understood. In reality, there are many tangible things that are happening as I write that have the potential to cause the world as we know it to change forever. It takes a person being very willingly ignorant to deny each of the above items in their entirety. I vacillate between being very worried about these things (some more than others) to accepting that some of these things are well beyond my control and trying to live the best life I can. Either way, letting go does me a number of favors. Changing my perspectives allows me to live with uncertainty while trying to control what I am able to. I try to appreciate my friends and family. I try to be healthy, but allow myself to enjoy the occasional chocolate bar and trip to McDonalds. I care about the environment; I recycle, compost, never litter, and drive a fuel efficient vehicle. I vote for the least worst politician that when elections come around (I’m so glad the green party got a seat and hope they will be a part of the next set of television debates - though I don’t agree with all of their policies/ideas). I keep some emergency supplies around my house. Nothing too serious, but enough to give my family and I a little while to think about our next step, should one of those frightening scenarios occur. I value protecting and taking care of my family without going to extremes (I would prefer myself to get hurt before any one of my family members, but I do not sit on my front steps, on a rocking chair, with a shotgun across my lap, waiting for someone to trespass) and I would go as far as I could to keep us alive, healthy, and happy so long as it it wouldn’t involve becoming a barbarian. Our world, though it can be cruel, unforgiving, and insane at times, still has much beauty in it and a lot that is worth trying for. Though much is beyond our control, we do still have a say in how many things do play out. I live as if human goodness will outweigh selfishness and if something happens next weekend, and I don’t end up helping my friend Sacha build a fence at his house (like what I had originally planned on doing), I will either check out or live in a post apocalyptic world knowing I did the things I could while here to have the life I wanted and chose and try to make the best out of an unideal situation.
