12/21/12 The date of the end of the world according to the I Ching, the Aztec calendar,
and the quatrains of Nostradamus, as presented by the History Channel.
Folks have predicting the end of the world since the beginning of language and we're still
here. Each end of the world date passes and we're still here. Oddly enough, we don't spend a
lot of time pointing out what morons we were for believing the prophecy, no do we tar and
feather the profit for having missed the end-of-the-world date and caused us anxiety without
cause. Perhaps we should offer some punishment for profits that screw up their predictions.
Maybe that would convince them to shut the hell up and save us all a lot of needless worry.
Even if we knew for certain when the end of the world would occur, what good would it do us?
What would we change in our lives? Stop paying our mortgage? Quit our job? Get a divorce or
married or both? Sit down and spend the last of time drunk or stoned?
I think the majority of us would continue our daily activities on the off chance that predictions
were wrong. Most any other action would be pointless.
The recent oil leak from deep on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico could be the harbinger of the
end. It's possible that if the oil kept spewing unstopped that the seas would eventually die and
with them a large portion of the oxygen processing system of the biosphere. It is feasible that
the process could take 2 or more years of gradually increasing misery for all life on the planet
until the atmosphere would no longer support life. Hopefully, this disaster has been brought
under control, but the question is, "What can any of us as individuals do to prevent such a
disaster in the future?". Unfortunately, the answer is not much. Even our government is pretty
powerless to prevent another disaster to happen. We don't control the oceans. An example of
how the continuing risks in supplying the world with oil is the recent announcement that Cuba
will begin off shore drilling less than 100 miles from our shore, and we have little or no say in
the matter.
All man-made disasters are triggered by some action or failure to act on the part of someone.
We have reached a stage in the history of human endeavor where a single individual can fail to
press a button, turn a knob, or flip a switch at the correct time and as a result unintentionally
usher in the end of the world as we know it. The really scary part is that most of the people that
are in a position to make such an error are on the low end of the pay scale with a resultant lack
if incentive to get things right every time.
The neglecting to act might be because it is raining too hard to go out to perform some simple
duty like taking a meter reading or turning a valve. Some routine check won't be performed
because it is routinely faked or "pencil whipped" so our coffee won't get cold, or we are asleep
when we shouldn't be, or we are talking on our cell phone at a critical time when several
events converge to create a disaster we could have prevented had we been paying attention.
How did we get to this point in time and space where we could easily cause the end of all life
through failure to perform some simple duty, or some decision made to save money and
increase profits for some corporation and its share holders? We got here by our relentless
pursuit of comfort and convenience. The irresistible human impulse to make more money to
buy more stuff may kill us all if we don't learn control it. RCC
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Perhaps the world won't end with a bang or a whimper,
maybe we'll just choke on our own pursuit of comfort