Monday, April 2, 2012

It's the End of the World as we know it


There have been several claims that the world is going to end.  I recall that my roommate last year knew a guy that refused to get a job because he believed that the world was going to end in May 2011.  Apparently this belief was linked to biblical beliefs, and I recall the tweets of that day saying ‘rapture’ with pictures of clothes lying on the ground.  I also recall the head of this theory saying that it was a mistake; try again in October, which again did not happen.  Now the countdown clock is focused on December 21, 2012 because of the Mayan colander. 

The question posed by all of this fuss is whether or not the world is indeed going to end, and how.  Some information that I know about the topic is that rapture will happen, or the poles of the Earth will reverse causing the world to be destroyed.  I also know that science has shown that this idea is ridiculous.  A point of view for this topic is that the rumors are true and that it is pointless to worry about anything because the world is going to end.  The consequence of this point of view is that when the world does not end, life will have been wasted.  Take the example of the guy from the beginning of this post, his belief in the end of the world led to him not having income for several months which could really hurt him financially in the future, if not already. 

4 comments:

  1. The Mayan Long run calender is like any other calender, it starts over again when it ends, its just that the civilization ended before the could finish this one and create another one. Also, apparently because the Mayan calender does not take into consideration leap years the calender already ended, this however is just something i heard. It does make sense though because the idea of leap years was created by the Romans and not used by many other cultures around the world.

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  2. Unless we have an extreme natural disaster due to chance, I also believe that the "end of the world" craze is a fallacy. This planet has existed for probably billions of years, and humans have survived here for what many suppose to be millions. Although we do not have proper documentation from these times, I believe that if we survived thus far we will be fine in the near future.

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  3. I think that every era has a number of people declaring that the end is near. It seems to be partly egotism, partly selfishness, and partly a good tale. It's egotism because we're often convinced, even if unconsciously, that our own existence represents the central fact of reality, and therefore our death must surely come at the time of cosmic Armageddon. It's selfishness because it's obvious that since ours is the final generation (as many have said), it's just good sense to exploit all of our resources and ignore the possibility that others may exist in the future. And it's a good narrative, after all. What would the Bible be without Revelation?

    We do, however, possess the ability to end the world as we know it more so than has any other species in world history, so it's always a possibility. :)

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  4. As long as we have been capable of thought people have tried to predict the end of the world and have manged to have masses of people believe them. The idea behind polar shifts is true and happens every hundred thousand years or so. That shift would cause serve climate change and other damage but would not destroy the earth. As far as the Mayan calendar goes my thought is that they just got tired of making the calendar. But as long as we are still alive you will always have people preaching about the end of the world and the masses will always be willing to listen...

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