Meditation 46: The End of the World

The thought of the "Last Days" is in the air.  Millenarian expectations fill the airways. Why now? What role does the end of the world play in our collective psychic lives?  What is it about the present configuration of events that prefigures a release of millenarian energies?  It is a strange phenomenon from the perspective of a broadly naturalistic philosopher such as me. For me, the universe is wonderful and mysterious, but it is understandable, so far as it is, in a worldly way through science and practical experience. So what could these last days be for me?  No one knows for sure the fate of the universe, but a good guess is that it will end either in fire or in ice. There will not be anyone around to witness this "end."  If humans do not manage to escape this earth and travel to other planets, then the expansion of the sun in its death throes will kill us also. However, not to worry, it is a long way off, billions of years, perhaps, and certainly more than we can ever imagine. The end of the species, Homo-sapiens, will not be the end of the world.

So why worry about the end of the world just now? I submit that it is a way to put off thinking about tomorrow in a realistic way.  This is the point at which politics and religious prophecies begin to mix.  For example, if you really think the world is going to end soon, and take the earthquake and tsunami off Sumatra to be a sign of Judgment Day, then what matters but the state of your soul when you go to meet your Maker?  Does it matter that the giant Condors will soon go extinct? Does it matter that global warming will eventually raise sea levels, flooding valuable human habitats?  Does it matter if health care deteriorates, schools fail, and the infrastructure falls apart?  Does it matter that some, the last to die in the end, are able to isolate themselves and their children and social set from the growing ills of the world?  Do we really have to fix social security, when in just a few years the world will come to an end?  Not really, not when you are looking at paradise with one eye and eternal flames with the other. 

The world about which the natural philosopher is interested does not matter at all to a soul already imagining itself winging heavenward. Listening to prophecies and imagining all kinds of fancies, the world in which we actually engage is really only a bad dream from which it is better to awaken sooner rather than later.  Philosophers no longer wish to escape into an ideal realm, a world more real and true than the "so-called" real world.

Concern with the end of the world is also a reflection of the dread that haunts the days of mortals.  Each person's death is the end of a world, and that world is taken with them.  It is no wonder just now that our minds are on death and destruction and the end of the world.  We have war aplenty and now natural disasters on a horrendous scale.  New diseases are colonizing the world, bringing a world plague. Water is going to be a problem, overpopulation, food production, running out of oil without a cheap energy source to replace it. There seems to be no end to the problems facing our species on this earth.  Indeed, in many ways we seem to be hastening our own demise. Now is the testing time for the intelligence of our species, so much praised as that which distinguishes us from the animals. Now we will find out how intelligent or how stupid Homo-sapiens can be.