Most people have
probably heard about the most recent “end-of-the-world” predictions. According
to some, the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world this coming Friday,
21/12/2012. Oh well, no need to mow the lawn then. Of course, those in the know
assure us that the Mayan calendar predicts no such thing. And anyway, even if
it did, why would we give it a second thought? What is this strange obsession
that (some) people have with doomsday prophecies? Why do people, far from being
terrified by them, actually appear to delight
in them?
I have, in the past,
mingled with whacky apocalyptics of the Christian variety. The end of the world
fills these people with, well, for want of a more appropriate term “joy”. It
isn’t really joy, of course. It is some strange, perverted, corrupt shadow of
joy. But even people without any obvious religious convictions appear to be, on
the one hand, extremely gullible when it comes to ancient or modern apocalyptic
ravings; on the other hand, they seem almost perversely eager to see the world
end.
Now, I am under no
illusions that either the human world or the natural world is some kind of
paradise or utopia. Both can be very dangerous. I am also under no illusions
that life is easy. I have suffered from fairly severe depression at several
periods in my life. As Annie Lennox once wrote and sang: “Dying is easy; it’s
living that scares me to death.” Even so, I have never particularly looked
forward to death; and I have never sought escape through the end of myself, or
wanted to take the world down with me. What I have wanted, at those terrible
times, was to be happy, not to be dead. Perhaps it helps that I don’t believe
in any life beyond this one. This is it. This is what I have to work with. And
I am going to do the best I can.
This world is both a
wonderful and a terrible place. Human beings are capable of the committing the
greatest cruelties and atrocities, and of showing the most amazing love and
creating the most astonishing beauty. Sometimes the same person is capable of
both. Perhaps all of us are. Of course there are problems in this world. Often
they seem insurmountable. But I sometimes wonder: Do these apocalyptic
calamities, that so seem to capture the human imagination, serve to distract us
from the actual calamities that face us today? Do we use these calamities to relieve
ourselves of responsibility for mowing the lawn? Perhaps it is easier to deal psychologically
with imaginary threats to the planet, which are so obviously beyond our
control, than with those more real and immediate threats that are very much
within our purview.
Fortunately, although
people seem to get excited about predictions of the end of the world, I doubt
that most people take them terribly seriously. They do still mow their lawns.
They continue to plan their activities for the weekend after the world has
ceased to be. They continue to invest in the stock market. Perhaps the fascination
is just an echo of our primitive fears in the face of a world we scarcely
comprehend. And perhaps, alongside this, we would like to be relieved of the
burden of responsibility. We are not responsible if someone or something else
is ultimately in control and deciding the fate of the world.
Anyway, these kinds of
apocalyptic ravings are always good for a laugh. They brighten an otherwise
fairly mundane day.
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