See, it's like this. We can't stand the idea that we're adrift in a world filled with six billion other rudderless ships, and that the best each of us can do is pick out a star to steer by and paddle with all our might in what we've decided is the right direction. We can't stand that level of personal responsibility. We can't take being utterly empty of certainty - the emptiness that having to choose for ourselves brings with it. Oh, we've cast aside this or that predictive belief system as insufficiently rigorous, and we're pleased and proud about that. But rather than finding ourselves now comfortably immune to superstition, we find that more and more of us will go in for any old thing!
So: 2012 is coming. And our bottom line is, we really seem to wish that there really was some plan. We want to believe that despite everything we've disproved, some ancient wisdom knows better. That a bunch of astonishingly savvy rock-carving astronomers could have picked out of patterns crossing the sky thousands of years ago, our cosmic overarching doom. That those patterns, long set-in-place, will all converge within a couple of years from now. Bringing maximum cataclysm, and the end of all days.
This comforts us!
Why?
Are we really that ill-at-ease having no greater plan or meaning in our lives? Are we so desperate for there to be some kind of cosmic plan that even a terrible one makes us feel better?
Or does some world-breaking end date free us, just for a moment, from having to contemplate the seemingly endless stretch of complications and obligations we've taken on? Maybe doomsday looms more easily than figuring out how to pay for all the tuitions, mortgages and retirements we've put on our own calendars. What if all of that were to be wiped away! In a dark fantasy wish-fulfillment moment that says: hey, turns out your stuff's not so big after all, buddy.
Perhaps for some of us, an inevitable, impending day of destruction simply eases the abdication of responsibility: "what I do doesn't matter anyway! We'll all be dead in a few years."? But you know what? We will all be dead in a few years. We all will. The world won't end, but each of us will end, and that soon.
These doomsday prophecies don't add any structure to your daily life. Even if there was a maximum cataclysm on the way, that wouldn't add to or take away meaning from what's going on now. It wouldn't make your inconsequential life part of a "bigger plan." It would just mean your meaningless life will be swept aside. Just as it would be if you were to be struck and killed by a stampeding circus elephant. But if you've found meaning in your life, a grand cataclysm is no greater a negation of that than a random accident would be.
I've lost track of how many doomsdays have passed me by in the time I've been alive. It's got to be at least eight, and that's only the ones I noticed being mentioned, amusedly, in the back pages of newspapers. I'm sure there were plenty others that I completely missed. Some group or other is always predicting the end, generally within a couple years, and always by tying it in to some prophecy or another. When the chosen doomsday passes by and the doom doesn't come, they pick another prophecy and predict again.
Yet every decade that goes by makes doomsday that much less likely. We're already dug in deeper than roaches – if we tried to swing our own doomsday, there'd be hundreds if not thousands of breeding populations of us left alive to weather the nuclear winter and reemerge, re-overpopulating the globe within a geological eyeblink. As far as the more cosmic scenarios, if you accept the more reasonable science fictions, it won't be long before we could conceivably dissuade that world-ending space rock. And if you accept the more optimistic science fictions, it won't be long before we've left our own rock behind - ages before the sun goes "blauw."
Still, I don't think any of that will stop us from whipping up and enjoying our direst predictions. We'll always be able to figure out some new cataclysm, to set in place and let loom. There's always got to be a doomsday marked down on the calendar. It's like a holiday for us, but one that never actually comes - we have to keep moving it back. Our Happy Future Doomsday: one day set aside, for everything to end, a day when like it or not we will all have to stop worrying about everything. For some reason, we just seem to need that release - never now, but always looming - to feel secure.
It's just a fable, like any other. The end keeps coming, and we all keep going. 2012 is just another end to another calendar. My calendar keeps going.
Shoot, I've already got meetings scheduled out to 2015.
Nuts to that. I guess I'll be crossing my fingers with the rest of us! Say, which day is it supposed to be in 2012, again? I should put it in my Outlook. I'll want celebrate the day before and the day after! For different reasons.
5 comments:
Excellent post. I agree that much of the appeal of a doomsday is the idea that soon our boring, complex lives will end and we will embark on a grand adventure where life is very dramatic as we forage for food, tend to the wounded, and fend off the gangs of vigilantes and thugs that will no doubt flourish among those who survive.
Of course, only those of us who have lived completely pampered lives would ever think any of that stuff sounded appealing.
We ARE longing for our responsibilites to end. We are also longing for adventure, for chances to be brave and resourceful and selfless, even though we know nothing of these qualities in our daily lives and certainly would not develop them overnight in response to a disaster.
We are also longing for judgement.
We might disagree about what exactly is wrong, but everyone who cares seems to think that there are some very major things wrong in our society. We want those wrongs righted, and we suspect that the only way might be to wipe everything out. Also, that's easier than working for justice now.
I just have two quibbles. One, doomsday frenzy is a pretty easy target.
Secondly, just because all human reasons for wanting a doomsday are base, doesn't mean this world is never going to end.
Maybe people secretly like the idea of the world ending because they don't like the idea of the world going on without them once they die. But if we all die together at once, it might help alleviate that feeling of alone-ness or make death something less scary. Maybe people are less likely to be frightened of some tragedy or suffering that they might end up sharing at a massive level. That whole 'if I can't be a part of that world, no one can' thing.
I could go on and on, practically forever, speculating on people's motives, fears, inspirations, etc..because I love to do that.
The only one I was ever really waiting for was 1996, which I had been told (in the 1980s) was when Nostradamus predicted World War III. Something about "Nineteen hundred and ninety six" and "sticks" and "the new city" and stuff.
I also thought maybe 2000 would be significant in some way, because it was 2000. But not bad, really! I was waiting all my life for that year's birthday to come, and I didn't expect it to be ruined by any apocalypse!
Hm, seeing the comments here makes me feel like this wasn't really a joke. Who really believes a doomsday is coming, ever? Or wants it? I think it comes up in the press because really, they only have the choice to write about serious things that nobody wants to hear about or frivolous things nobody should care about. This is sort of a mix of the two: a ridiculous thing people maybe should care about if it were actually true, but also is totally inconsequential even if it were true, because there would be no way to prepare for it. If it's the end of the world, it's the end of the world.
I think the historical interest in talking about possible end of the world dates has more to do with people's shared fear of death and judgment, and one way they confront it is by imagining a predetermined date for its arrival. It doesn't matter if that date is inaccurate, has to be reset, has different reasons for its existence, whatever. There just always has to be some possible date to keep people thinking "that's when it might all end." I can't think of the one that's past 2012. Someone should investigate and see if they've already dug up one yet. They're certainly going to have to find one by 2013, so they better get on it now if they haven't yet. Find some ancient text to interpret, or some newly unscrambles waves in radio signals.
@Jen - thank you! And the appeal of adventure/heroism that's pitched in so many post-apocalyptic flicks is definitely/probably also a draw on some level (though I tend to agree with you that most people would be ill-equipped to like the reality!). I do think this world is going to end. It will have to - the sun's got a shelf life. I believe the species will be long gone by then, though. To the stars. Slowly. (I'm not a believer in the faster-than-light-travel, I believe it's impractical - of course, I'd be delighted to be proved otherwise!). Doomsday frenzy an easy target? It sure is! I pretty much leave those hard targets alone. :-)
@jill - in terms of psychological reasons, I hadn't remotely considered that one! Damn if it isn't compelling/plausible! I love it. Yeah. Combination of (hypothetical-)misery-loves-company and if-I-can't-have-it. I too love to speculate on various reasons why - especially any time I see something, some recurring obsession or trend or mass-collectively-held idea that I can't really "get" in a satisfying way.
@blue - well, joking in the sense that I think it's an odd fixation, and plenty to poke at, but serious in the sense that I think it says something about us as a species that it runs so deep and pervasive. But I think you can take it either way. I don't think anyone really wants a doomsday, in terms of if they could check a yes/no box and get what they ordered. I like the idea that putting a date to it is just a way to act like we have some control. I also agree that they better get on the next doomsday now!
But really, though. There's probably no real rush.
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