Doomsday

Doomsday. It's an interesting and solely human phenomenon, this belief in 'The End.' In my experience, there are three basic approaches to a philosophy of doomsday. People of a religious bent take it for granted, looking forward to it if giving it any special consideration at all. Why should they sweat it? They're on the winning team. Atheists, when forced to think about it, hope (secretly, of course--they won't admit it) that when it happens, it's all mankind's fault. Nuclear warfare, asteroid collision, the sun blowing up in n billion years. That way they're proven right, and we ALL go to the blissful oblivion they expect of death. Agnostics shrug it off as one of those things that there is no answer for, certainly no answer THEY can come up with; they want to be left alone, since, after all, we'll all find out when it happens.

There has always been this particular, ominous shadow hanging over life. I don't believe, and history will at least sort of back me up on this, that the idea of 'the end of the world' is a modern contrivance. After all, every living thing has the guarantee of death, an end to whatever journey we make of life. Thinking beings are bound to paint their mental picture of the universe with their own faculties, and this looming, certain darkness has to tint the whole canvas at some point. It's basic transference of personal knowledge to world-view, and it's neither atypical nor inherently wrong. "I'm going to die someday. What happens if the World dies?"

Perhaps it's nothing more than that; and perhaps, as the New Testament says (after my paraphrasing), when everyone is saying, "Nothing's going to happen, there is no end, it's just like it's always been," then it will happen. Once nobody believes there will be a literal 'End', then the End comes--I can't speak for the reader, but I know that's just my luck.

For what it's worth, I, myself, am not at all convinced either way. I see logic on both sides. One the one hand, every part of humanity longs for consonance to follow dissonance. Death is a kind of resolution to the tension of life on either a personal scale or a global one. Perhaps the human desire for Doomsday is enough to fill our need; we believe it could happen, we know it should happen, we kind of expect it to happen--but we don't mind it happening, say, tomorrow, or next month, or 2099. Just not TODAY. Let us make one last trip to church, and let us get our paychecks first, and get to the bank, and swing by the store, and call the grandkids...

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