The End of the World

Recently, I took a train ride from Lansdale, Pennsylvania to Cumberland, Maryland by way of Washington DC.


And while riding on the train into hills of West Virginia, I was thinking... What is the allure of the "End of the World" scenarios? ...and why all the predictions for it?

I mean, most people go through their day-to-day lives assuming that tomorrow will be a lot like today. No shooting flames of fire will come up from cracks in the Earth, the sky won't fall, and the world, most likely, won't end.

But for others, doom and predicting it must have some appeal, or why else would they do it?


The most (in)famous example these days is Harold Camping, a California-based "Christian" radio broadcaster who believes that May 21, 2011, will mark Judgment Day, ushering in five months of torment for the unsaved until the universe finally ends on Oct. 21, 2011.

"It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful day," according to Camping.

Camping has made this prediction before, in 1994 (and was obviously wrong) but the tens of thousands of failed doomsday predictions throughout history are a symptom of some irritation deep under the skin of humankind.

Apparently, the "apocalyptic worldview" is a way of understanding the world. Or at least it is to Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal.


Roundhouse in Martinsburg, West Virginia
According to DiTommaso, the apocalyptic worldview isn't uncommon. People like Camping or Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese doomsday cult responsible for the sarin gas attacks on a Tokyo subway in 1995, might seem like nutcases. But believe it or not, doomsday appeals to the secular and well-adjusted as well.


What ties these disparate groups together is a sense that the world's problems are too big to solve.

Problems that have become so large they have no solution and people (in general) feel humankind will be unable to solve these problems. For many, using a biblical point of view, God is going to solve them. From other points of view, there has to be some sort of catastrophe.

The apocalyptic worldview springs from a desire to reconcile two conflicting beliefs.

The first is that there is something dreadfully wrong with human existence and on the other hand, there is a sense that there is a higher good or some purpose for existence, a hope for a better future.

According to DiTommaso, viewing the world as a flawed place headed toward some sort of divine "correction" reconciles these two beliefs.


Because believers are certain that their sacred text(s) can never be wrong, failed doomsday predictions only convince them that their own interpretations were in error, opening the door to new predictions. For example, Jehovah Witnesses have predicted and waited for the end in 1914, 1915, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975 and 1994.

Historically, those who have predicted doomsday, including the early Christians, have been persecuted and oppressed, so the prospect of a final judgment is, in fact, reassuring and comforting.


The train home arrives in Cumberland, Maryland
To be reassured, however, the end-of-the-worlder has to expect doomsday to come within their limited lifetime — and they have to expect to somehow "survive".

Religious believers usually expect that they'll be among those saved from the torments of an ending world. Secular doomsday-fearers, on the other hand, expect to they will need to fight for their survival as social order and infrastructure are destroyed.


Unlike Camping, these sort of people aren't preparing for the end of the world; they're preparing for TEOTWAWKI, which stands for "the end of the world as we know it." The end might come in the form of an asteroid strike, a giant solar flare, a nuclear attack or economic collapse, but their goal is the same: to be ready for anything.

I guess for them, there will be smug satisfaction in being able to say, "Oh yeah! I'm ready when the bombs go off or the environment collapses or the magnetic poles reverse."


The Potomac River and rocky cliffs at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia
Is the world really so bad that people want to "get off" of it?

Unfortunately, for many, yes it is.

I've seen a bit of the world - and in a lot of places, crushing poverty and no real sense of promise in the future remotely exists - For example, those people packing themselves 200-300 deep into trucks in Guatemala in order to come to the USA had no "hope" in their current existence.

The same conditions prevail in many places - Africa, Indonesia, the Middle East, Afghanistan and the once Fertile Crescent, Haiti, and even in the slums and ghettos of this country.

As a young boy, I saw poor people in Thailand that drank, bathed and brushed their teeth in muddy canals filled with motor boats leaking oil and floating human feces. Their hollow faces looked blankly (but somehow enviously) at the group of people I was with - this scene has forever embedded in my mind - not only how well off the people in the USA are - but how poorly off so many others are...


I'm going to make a prediction here - I don't think the world is coming to an end on May 21, 2011.

The world could become a much better place - if humankind would set aside their petty differences and hatreds - and start working together to re-light the extinguished, or never-lit, dreams of the many people desperate to have a meaning in their lives and place in the world free from violence and fear.

What and where is the dream of mankind? If there is anything that seems "gone from the world" on May 21, 2011, it is this dream of a shiny future for each and everyone of us.