Most of this blog has been devoted to the Apocalypse which is the subject of my book, and the main reason for this blog. While the majority of the book deals with the biblical version of the endtimes, I've been equally fascinated with the attempt to divine our future from some ancient texts by a civilization that used human sacrifice as a religious rite. That's right, I'm talking about those madcap Mayans who've fueled this latest doomsday scenario with their 2012 prediction. However, appeasing a god through murder puts a damper on any enlightenment they may have regarding the future. It's hard to take a society seriously when they routinely throw people off cliffs because it isn't raining enough. Just a personal observation.
With that in mind, only man is preoccupied with his demise, constructing countless extinction theories through the ages. These have been in response to our wickedness, our unmitigated destruction of natural resources, and our obsession with reality television. Each one is an affront worthy of our decimation. Every other species is locked in survival mode, trying like hell to pass on their genetic goop into the next generation. That's the only objective. Conversely, we're lost in a world of self-awareness, wondering what it all means, and why the hell must we get saddled with a two-year contract to make a fucking phone call. Right now I'm being crushed by apps cause these jerks insist these little buggers will make my life easier. Yeah, like I want to listen to Howler monkeys fart disco hits. This is the shit that Bell envisioned when he was working in his lab? Evolution comes with a price. We may be able to assert our dominance over the natural world, but I'm sure the day will come when the electronic world will assert its dominance over us. We're already slaves to technology, constantly wired and plugged in, waiting for the latest gadget to satiate us. Eventually, we'll be so dependent on the virtual world and the products that bring it to us, that we'll be taking orders from comps like Hal 9000, telling us to go get it a silicon boost or he'll cut off our internet porn. Upgrade at your peril.
Now, I'll keep giving updates on what's happening as December 21st closes in, detailing the hysteria that's bound to build as the fateful date approaches. Right now Long Count Calendar Clubs are springing up in my community, with members doing bucket list crap that's making them these "doomsday darlings" by some local media outlets. They've gone skydiving, whitewater rafting, spelunking and felching. It makes ya wanna puke. Nothing worse than some apocalyptic attention whores.
For the moment, however, I wanted to take a respite from Armageddon and its attending mythology, and veer into a more pragmatic approach to the future. While total annihilation appeals to the romantic in me, I don't see the world ending in a ball of fire or being overtaken by a race of aliens who want to enslave us for our wide assortment of valuable minerals and decorative candles. Actually, we should be around for a long time. We're a hearty species that has the ability to adapt to almost any environment as long as there's beer and some munchies. We've been roaming this planet for eons, from the cruel Cenozoic winters that greeted us at the dawn of our birth, through the plagues of the Middle Ages, where everything was either infected or oozing puss because personal hygiene was still a foreign concept to most hulking barbarians, through the rise and fall of empires where conquest and subjugation were the order of the day, through the tyranny of despots whose murderous hand spread across continents, to the present day Orwellian nightmare that has us cataloged and stamped in the age of terrorism. We've endured hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, drought, famine, disco, fluoridated water, the Twilight franchise and Dr. Phil, and we're still muddling through, hoping we get a good parking space.We're one fucking tough, albeit whiny, species.
We owe this survival to a large organ, one that allows us to solve complex problems, tackle prickly issues, remember faces and names, and install fine print into every contract so we can fuck over our neighbor. We have the capacity to perform open heart surgery and make beer can chicken...often at the same time. In fact, my surgeon was barbecuing last week while removing a small tumor. That's progress. We'll continue to evolve, manipulating our environment so it keeps sustaining us as we continue to march through time.
Seriously, our egos are too big to think we could be wiped out by some cosmic force other; we simply believe we have the grey matter to combat anything the solar system throws at us. It's that same hubris that enabled us to harness the elements, some to our detriment. We'll just saddle up some rocket and nudge that asteroid off its course. Either that or some network exec will design a reality show, maybe "Are you smarter than a Hurtling Killer Asteroid?"
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