The End of the World

I guess its been several days since I felt like making fun of those who really believe the end of the world happens today on a rolling schedule, even allowing for daylight savings time…

The last time I had so much fun was over the secular apocalypse at 2000, when I had friends who were sure airplanes were going to drop out of the sky and we’d be eating each other in the smoking ruins of post-computer holocaust…

But at some point the feeling of superiority slips away, kind of like that last breath of a dying person.

There is something deep, something visceral in our human belief in the end that cannot be denied.

I suspect there are many reasons. One, of course, is that there will be an end. I die. You die. We all die. Sometimes the end comes with a bang. More often with a whimper. But, come, it will. The end.

Of course in the organized versions, there’s that twist. In most of these scenarios, someone escapes. Not all – in the Norse end, even the gods die as the cosmos slips into chaos. But in most, someone, read me, pretty much always it is “me,” escapes.

And that desire needs to be noticed. It is a dangerous thing. It is natural. And, it is a dangerous thing.

Of course, as human as human can be.

That body knowing things end, and the body desire to survive, I’m no stranger to those things.

But, when we cling to the notion we are immune, we are above, we are apart, when the nasty truth appears, we are capable of doing some very bad things. Killing the messenger is one. But, worse, there’s an inclination to re-write the story and then to try and enforce it on others. To make others live out our sorrow…

And, pretty much all of us are capable of this.

That desperate desire to escape, to be excused from the human condition, has led to the foundation of many religions, and many inquisitions.

So, the taste for taunting has ended.

And, mainly, in this moment I feel sorry for those who sold houses and quit jobs. And the patched together lives they’re going to be facing.

Kind of like the rest of us, I guess.

In that, too, here we are, common as dirt.

So, the point?

Pay attention.