The End of the World is in Your Head

Psychic Sylvia Browne claims the world will end in 95 years. Ouch. But what does "end" mean for us? What does "end" mean to you? Does it mean "you" will end?

Maybe it's an "end of the world as we know it" type of thing. In that case, the world ends on a daily basis with its constant change. Things are accelerated now; with technology the world is shrinking and if you stop to take a look around you might be run over. Maybe the world ending won't be a sudden event, but a slow evolution, and there will be no line of demarcation. But we'll take a look around and realize it's not the world you remember. With that definition, I'm sure every person sees the world end at some point in their life. A local talk radio show features callers who share "what is the world coming to?" anecdotes and then they play the REM song, you know the one I'm talking about. Only these people don't feel fine about it.

Maybe "the world", meaning living on Earth, is what is going to end. We'll go live somewhere else, on some other planet or in floating capsules or something. The planet Earth, once our homeland, might be astronomy's version of a junked out car. And we won't care because even though our old world ended we have a shiny new one. Take that, Nostradamus.

Maybe it's a religious thing, where the religion that is the "right" one (according to their practitioners they all are) will get to keep the world. The world will end for some of us and not others. The book series Left Behind touches on this. Jehovah's Witnesses can tell you more about it.

The biggest fear is that we will cause the end of the world, intentionally or otherwise. This is part of what keeps us engaged with the doings of other governments, so that things don't escalate.

Maybe what we consider reality is an illusion, so in that case the world ending might be our waking from a dream. Maybe the physical realm is archaic, and once we've evolved far enough we won't need a "world". We'll just be vapor and thoughts.

In these scenarios, I've been optimistic that the world's end wouldn't necessarily take us out, but would be symbolic. Or at the very worst a disruption. Though the dinosaurs were taken out, they didn't have the misfortune of knowing it. And if the world should come to an end while I'm still on it, I hope the fates are equally kind. So the fear of the world ending is worse than the world itself ending