Viva La Apocalypse

As Homo sapiens we tend to identify ourselves with the tools we use. Our earliest ancestors chipped flint and so we call it the Stone Age. Later, mankind learned the smelting of ore and so the Bronze and Iron Ages were born. Man’s understanding of tools continued to evolve and deepen and so came the industrial revolution and with it unprecedented wealth and terrifying poverty. Now we live in a time of instant communication, ideas flit down miles of fiber optics at the speed of sunlight and so we call it the Age of Information.

Throughout all the many ages of mankind one truth has remained consistent; the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Most of us have never encountered a handbasket filled with anything more sinister than a few overripe Easter eggs. Still we insist, with certainty and fervor, that the world is bound for a diabolical hand basket that almost no one has seen. If fact, there is only one person in the history of the recorded word to claim an encounter with this readily portable scrap of damnation, a thirteenth century Italian poet named Dante Alighieri. According to Dante, the handbasket can be found in the inner most circle of hell. This fiendish satchel is allegedly reserved for ungrateful children who are too busy pretending to be big shots to give their poor forgotten mothers a call. Those familiar with Inferno will know that Virgil balked at the thought of leading Dante into that twisted realm and so the mind-bending tortures that await these vile sinners remains a topic of great controversy among theologians. Some say that the inside of the hand basket resembles an overheated station wagon with a broken radio, others claim that it is a dimly lit sitting room were all the furniture is covered in plastic and everything smells of cat feces. Most theologians will concede that the realm is likely populated with lonely grey-haired demons in housecoats.

It speaks to the durability of the world and our species that it and we can go to hell in a handbasket for going on now 250000 years and still be here with nary a singe to show for it. Despite this track record of continued existence in the face of hell held in a basket, apocalyptic cults continue to thrive. I’m not just talking about the sort of wackiness that our wise and benevolent President ascribes to either. Environmentalists tell us that the planet will die, economists tell us that China will own our government, and baseball fans have been nearly as disillusioned by steroid abuse as they were by the last players strike.

The thing is, all these chicken-littles are right. The world will end, is ending, has ended. But even as the world dies it is reborn; sorry rapture candidates, there’s no easy way out, you and yours are stuck here with the rest of us until the sun goes dark. It’s past time to stop worrying about the end of all we know, instead lets prepare for all that is to come.