Is The World is Coming to an End Soon?

When I was a teenager I was convinced the world was going to end soon. Overpopulation and environmental destruction were going to destroy us. Anything new was inferior to old because the resources to build anything new were scarce and nearly depleted. I expected our quality of life would slowly deteriorate as we became poorer and poorer, in a world where resources became scarcer and scarcer, and pollution more and more life threatening. There was no point in carrying on. I laughed at people who were optimistic about the future. There was no point in making any career plans because the world was going to be destroyed, and heaven forbid that I should be responsible for bringing children into this world. They would hate me for the life they would have to live.

Well I got sick with schizophrenia and many of my delusions revolved around these sorts of conclusions. I was going to save the world from destruction by hybridizing the AIDS virus with the common cold, eliminating 4 billion people, returning the world to it's pristine state. Humanity would survive and a human life would become precious once again, because there weren't many survivors. I imagined North America might be preserved as a park, and the survivors would live on islands in the Caribbean and South Pacific. Nobody would actually choose to live in Canada, with our climate!

I was going to rescue women as well from their mothers who were envious of their youth and sexuality. I thought Freud got it part right, that mothers compete with daughters for male sexuality, and moms had a power advantage. Hence all women had a very crippled sexuality. You only had to read Malinowski's "Sexual Life of Savages" or read about the Sun Temple at Konarak to see what female sexuality was really like. Later I realized that the aliens were putting humans through periods of sexuality followed by periods of antisexuality. We are presently in a period of strong antisexuality, but there was nothing I could do about it. In fact it was important to be able to survive a period of antisexuality. The aliens controlled everything. The same was true of everything else I worried about, and so I stopped caring.

I have learned many things about schizophrenia over the last ten years, and I experienced schizophrenia both treated and untreated for twenty five years. It's very easy to look back on my life and wonder about when schizophrenia was a factor in the things I experienced. It clearly was when I was homeless the summer of 1980. I lost weight in Calgary, sleeping in the park or at the single men's hostel, never finding out if there was a soup kitchen where I could get a meal. I made a vow not to beg for money on the street. I was too proud. For some reason I thought everything would be alright. Had I not just caused the Mt. St. Helen's eruption? Was I not a household name amongst tantric Tibetans Buddhists. Did I not impress the international community by discovering World War Two was caused by a virus, and so prevent another World War in our future?

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