Did I call it? High five me.
And again, in case you missed them, my own take on the end of the world articles.
Guys, I've lived through the 'end of the world' several times. Christ was supposed to come back in 1978, the year before I graduated high school. My dad had every radio preacher yapping all year about it. I grew up with numerology, prophecy, everything on up to the latest in UFOs, which some believe are Satan's way of getting around. I grew up without doctors and have survived epstein barr, bartonella, and lyme disease and MORE with no medical intervention until years later, and boy am I paying for it. I grew up with the exciting adrenaline rush of fear, just like kids who grew up watching old Frankenstein and Dracula movies. And when I grew up, I went to college, got a sociology/anthropology degree, studied world cultures and religions going back 25,000 years, studied earth's geological history back to the beginning, and now study cosmology and a wonderful variety of physics theories and experiments. If there is a choice between the adrenaline rush of ignorance or the logic of science, I choose science.
FEAR is what will end the world. PANIC is what will cause the chaos. It won't be the failure of technology when solar storms very naturally flare up again over the next few years, it won't be global warming, it won't be some big spiritual intervention from something beyond our physical plane. The earth has been here 4 billion years. People have been here in some form for over a million years. The only thing that is drastically changing is that there are suddenly nearly 8 billion of us thinking that retail shopping is the 'norm' and expecting that to last forever. What WE fear is the end of utopia, which we have basically come near to creating with industrialization and globalization. The end of world ~trade~ is what we fear, and the end of online gaming and blogging when the solar flares knock our satellites out. What we fear is having to go back to scratching around in the dirt to find food and washing our clothes in ponds and rivers.
This is a very natural fear. It's a healthy fear. We know deep inside that this golden age of super technology and easy living can't last forever. And what is forever? We are lucky to even have it now. But don't blame it on the cosmos. Don't blame it on greenhouse gases. What is going to destroy us is FEAR AND PANIC. The closer we come to the 'end of the world', the more people are going to freak out. We have a sort of herd mentality because we are very social beings. When one panics, it's contagious. And since this end of the world thing is happening evenly across cultures and religions on a world wide scale this time, we are going to see some serious fear and panic.
If you would like a little information on how this panic is going to start happening, google 'solar flares' and start reading. The solar cycle peak will be 2011-2012, and scientists are already working on upgrading GIS technology for rapid response and travel that rely on GPS, such as police and ambulances and air travel. Yes, we *expect* problems to come. Our technology is not impermeable (yet) to solar interference, and if you aren't hip to the tech info out there, you're gonna be one of the panic crowd stomping around that your cell phone and tv don't work. Believe me, billions of dollars are already being pumped into research and tech improvement because scientists KNOW these things are coming, but the uneducated masses who don't take advantage of learning while they have the chance and the world to google at their fingertips are going to panic when their worlds go 'dark' and suddenly they're stuck in their local time zones without outside communication.
It's really important to see this as a cycle that happens over and over in the dance the earth does around the sun, and ~it will pass~. Solar flares aren't new, and neither are planet alignments, asteroids, and whatever else we can't control. We're just much more aware of them now because so many of us depend on the technology these things can destroy. But the only thing that could destroy the world outright is a direct hit from a neighboring quasar shooting a pulsar burst right at us. So far that hasn't happened, most of the stars going supernova are far enough away to have very little direct impact, but should one blow up close enough to our solar region in this galaxy and our earth happens to wander right through a path of super radiation jetting through, half the earth could be fried in an instant with no warning. Yeah, THAT is something you really wanna cross your fingers on never happening (which my dad thinks Revelations is all about). But once you study cosmology and see that so many things have already happened and are still happening, you begin to appreciate that we have been very, very lucky to have gotten this far in our little utopia, and just because the masses believe a certain date has an ascribed meaning doesn't mean anything to the cosmos. It's a HUMAN thing. It's the same thing that we laugh about ancient people doing, believing in myths and deities and magic. There is nothing different now, the human mind still reacts in fear and panic over what we can't control.
IT. WILL. PASS.
When 2013 gets here, we can all get back to our little lives and start dreaming up a new day for the world to end.
I really like this guy.
The Future of Civilization
And I REALLY like these guys.
Ghost Hunters Meet Hellboy
We'll be ok. Don't panic. Use your heads. If you are worried that other people panicking will result in your quality of life going downhill, prepare for that. Buy batteries. Stockpile water. Learn to raise tomatoes and chickens. Make friends with people who know farmers. Develop a good rapport with those around you so you can depend on each other if a temporary local crisis really does happen. (Actually, those happen all the time.) Build a social network for survival. Be smart, logical, forgiving, kind. Don't destroy yourselves with fear and panic.
And while you're at it, stop dumping off dogs and cats and other unwanted pets for other people to have to deal with just because you can't handle dealing with the cost and responsibility. I really think part of the biggest problems we'll have will be wild dogs and cats running around.
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