If you are reading this the world must not have come to an end yet. That is probably a good thing, we suppose, although with the way the world has been going lately one can’t say for sure.
Many people have been expecting the world to end today, all because some ancient Mayan astronomers devised a calendar that concluded on this date. What’s left of the Maya have lately been assuring the world that just because their calendar has run out of time it doesn’t mean everything else has, probably in vain hope that their once-great empire won’t be thought just another wacky doomsday cult, but of course that hasn’t prevented the usual apocalyptic anxieties. There are reports from all over the globe about people anticipating today’s big finale, some of whom seem to take the matter very seriously.
Perhaps these are the same folks who anticipate the end of the world every time it is announced, but we suspect that the Mayan pedigree of the latest apocalypse gives it a certain intellectual respectability that the intermittent pronouncements by Christian sects do not enjoy. The Mayan empire was an early victim of western imperialism, after all, and according to the inviolable rules of multi-culturalism that confers an ancient wisdom which modern westerners are expected to regard with a guilty awe. Like every other society of human beings the Maya had admirable virtues and deplorable vices, ranging from a knack for astronomy to a tendency to commit human sacrifice, but polite society will nonetheless agree that their end times scenario deserves a special consideration.
Every religion has its eschatology. Hindus believe that the world ends every few billion years or so, then starts all over again. Christians have long been divided on the question, with the pre-millenialists and post-mllenialists and amillienlialists arguing over the very cyrptic passages of the Book of Revelation and some Old Testament text, but most agree on some very explicit scripture saying that no one but God knows when the end will come. Islam is similarly split, with stark differences of opinion between Sunnis and Shiites, and the Iranian theocrats of the latter denomination reportedly believe they are commanded to hasten the end with their nuclear weapons program.
Secularists who scoff at all such superstitious nonsense should note that both ancient religion and modern science concur that there was a beginning and there will be an end. Science offers a number of end time scenarios, each as a gruesome as anything organized religion has envisioned, and most of the scientifically-suggested cataclysms conveniently justify an degree of government control over human behavior. The same people who scoff at anything theological will invariably agree that the inevitable result of sports utility vehicles and incandescent light bulbs is environmental Armageddon.
Which puts us in mind of a long ago late night drive across Kansas listening to the “Coast to Coast” radio program. This unreliable yet highly entertaining show is usually devoted to flying saucers, conspiracy theories, and paranormal phenomena, but on this occasion it invited callers to discuss their expectations for the end of the world. The possibilities ran the gamut from the religious to the scientific, with plenty of nuclear bombs thrown in for good measures, but all the callers seemed to share the same hopeful enthusiasm for the end of everything. As with the current crop of doomsayers, they seemed to prefer it to the prospect of getting up in the morning and going trough another routine day.
This is an understandable impulse, especially to those of us who see nothing but a long and precipitous civilizational decline ahead, but it should be resisted. We’ll boldly predict that the world won’t end today, if only because no one will be around to gloat about it if we’re wrong, and gird ourselves for the long slog toward the inevitable day awaiting us all when la commedia é finita. No final debauchery for us, even in the unlikely event we could find any willing collaborators, and if Saturday does happen to come around we’ll try to make the best of it.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 