There have been a tremendous number of End of the World (EoW) predictions that have come and gone in the last ten thousand years or so since humanity started communicating. Plagues, famines, droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, asteroids, comets, acid rain, global warming, nuclear destruction and so on and so on, and you know what all of these predictions so far have in common? None of them have come to pass yet! Amazing isn’t it? It is almost as though we can’t wait to check out en masse from this mortal coil and yet as a species we seem to fall for it every time. The next Pope is the last one, the Mayans predicted global catastrophe, the aliens are coming, the next big asteroid is due any day now, Yellowstone parks volcano is a hundred thousand years overdue so that has got to blow soon. I sometimes wonder why we worry about this stuff. It isn’t as if any of us can do anything about these Extinction Level Events (ELE).
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that we are fundamentally self destructive and we just love to be reminded that our time here is limited. I think it is that coupled with the ease of making money from disaster scenarios that keep this nonsense at the forefront of the media. Did you know that there are several websites through which you can purchase food containers that will keep food fresh for twenty five years? Why? What food are you not going to eat in a disaster scenario for twenty five years? Wouldn’t you have pretty much run out of whatever you had stockpiled way before this? It seems like yet more cash in nonsense! Besides, whats wrong with tinned food? If it is good enough for transpolar expeditions I’m pretty certain it’s good for whatever else we might encounter.
What amuses me most I think is that when you talk to people who buy into this stuff they always seem to make the assumption that it is they who are going to survive. Who are they trying to kid? How does being prepared for a global disaster make you any more likely to survive the disaster, and if you did survive, wouldn’t you be better off just heading to a supermarket and clearing the shelves first? I can’t quite work out whether the whole thing makes me want to weep for our lack of comprehension, or jump on the bandwagon and start offering cheap radiation suits and survival rations on the premise that if we are ever in a position to need them I am extremely unlikely to be in a position to answer any complaints after whatever happens happens.
Sounds like great business sense to me. Here, buy this radiation suit. If it works you’ll be happy you bought it, if it doesn’t you’ll never know so you might as well….Sometimes my cynicism frightens me, but I guess that probably goes with the territory of trying to look a bit deeper into the psychology behind why we believe the things we believe. I’m pretty sure that the belief in our imminent destruction is closely linked to our belief in the divine, our spirituality. I suspect that both reside in the same part of the brain and are built from the same components. It is interesting to note that many disaster scenarios are closely linked to religious belief, either we don’t believe enough, or we believe in the wrong God or whatever it might be. Maybe we should consider that the time for superstition and belief without evidence is coming to an end and we should focus more heavily on understanding the World around us and the context of our World within the Universe.
Of course, there are even issues with this given that there are scientists employed in organizations that are specifically set up to investigate best practice in disaster scenarios. These scientists have a vested interest in keeping us fearful of global disasters as their very livelihood depends on continued funding which depends on continued fear of such events. When you watch supposedly unbiased and informational documentaries on subjects such as mega-tsunami and super-volcanoes and you see these scientists presenting their cases you can almost see them wink as they talk about how unlikely it is that Yellowstone will destroy us all or that Las Palmas will slip into the sea and flood the whole of North America…..but it could just happen tomorrow…..(suckers)
Maybe there isn’t a way around it, and we just have to deal with it as best we can…..
No comments:
Post a Comment