When I was a wee lad I spent many sleepless nights with the letters ICBM running through my head. I don't remember how old I was when I learned that the human race could utterly obliterate itself with the press of a few buttons but it seemed likely to my young mind that if such a button existed there'd be some kook who would be happy to press it. One could only hope that the kook and the button were kept at a safe distance from each other.
After a few months of worrying needlessly about thermonuclear destruction, I finally decided that it just wasn't worth spending energy on. If someone really wanted to destroy the planet there wasn't a damn thing I personally could do about it so the issue wasn't worth my attention. Plus, I naively reasoned, who could possibly want to immolate the planet given that they'd also end up as a Hiroshmia-style shadow on a sidewalk somewhere in the process? Or, at best, alone in a bomb shelter for the rest of their natural lives?
Twenty-five years later, it seems that a lot of the people on the planet want the world to end or are at least waiting eagerly for it. Eighty-Five percent of the people in this country describe themselves as belonging to some religion. In the case of Christians (by far the most populous group), the 'end of days' represents the final judgment of mankind by God and therefore is nothing to be feared. The Christians seem convinced that God will come down and take out the Muslims while the Muslims seem convinced of exactly the opposite. In both cases this is an outcome to be giddily anticipated since both sides believe they are indisputably correct in their thinking. The faithful go to heaven (just like those "In the even of rapture, this car will be unmanned." bumper-stickers that I adore so much) while the non-believers get to remain sitting in the resulting bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Religious texts are pretty clear that the world ends in one big, nasty war and now, for the first time in history, we have the ability to truly take ourselves out and, as these televangelists enjoy saying, "fulfill prophesy" and we're doing our best to make that happen. Israel must exist as a state for the rapture to occur so the American government does anything it can to keep it in place no matter how it may grate on the neighbor's nerves. The Jews have their 'spotless red heifer' so we're that much closer to rebuilding the temple and resuming animal sacrifices. As far as I know, the Muslims still await their Twelfth Imam (Allah be thanked).
On the saner side of things, I realize that the average person (ok, let me back up. I hope like HELL that the average person) isn't REALLY looking forward to the end of the planet. We're all looking for the best possible future for our children and our children's children... right?
That's why we generally don't give a crap about the environment, dump chemicals into our waterways, spew poison into the air, kill all the animals we want for any reason that suits us (the Bible says they're here just for us after all) and cut down all the forests...
Um, and that's why instead of trying to make the world a better place for everyone we spend a trillion dollars on a war that's really just a 'Crusade'. (yeah, remember when this all started and Bush was dumb enough to call the war a Crusade? It's OK though because when the comment was translated into Arabic is came out as "War of the Cross". That's not TOO overtly religious.)
So is man just innately self-destructive? Sure we've had our petty squabbles about women and land and goldmines and butter for time immemorial but does that mean we have to constantly raise the stakes in even the most mundane argument until we reach our eventual annihilation? It seems that religion, the one thing that's supposed to keep us being nice to each other, isn't helping but in fact pushing us in the opposite direction. Why would you avoid an outcome that is actually your ultimate and final reward? The fact that the world hasn't come to an end yet at the hands of the American theocracy makes me seriously question the piety of those in power. What ARE you waiting for?
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