The End of the World?

After watching the movie Deep Impact recently (decent emotional movie, and I have a thing for both Tea Leoni and Leelee Sobieski), I couldn't help but think of the sense of apocalyptic-doom that has flooded Facebook walls and social interaction lately.

I don't think that the end of the world is nigh.  I don't buy that stuff.  Do you know how many times people have predicted the end of the world?  Go ahead and  look on Wikipedia how many people have prophesied the end of the world, the return of Jesus, or any kind of deity bringing about the destruction of mankind.  Go look at all those predictions and with an open mind consider how those errant prophecies are similar to the ones that you might believe.  As far as I can tell all of those predictions have at least one thing in common: they have all been wrong so far.  I'm sure that many if not all of the people that prophesied what they did also had the same conviction that what they believed was definitely going to 'come to pass' the same way that many of my friends, family, and acquaintances are convinced that their apocalyptic expectations are correct.  

I've had the delight to see the TV show Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel.  While I can appreciate the preparation that those people go through to make sure that they are safe from harm/disaster, I can't help but emphasize the end of every show.  Doesn't anyone else notice when the producers of the show ask 'the experts' what the likelihood is of things like a polar shift, the US financial collapse, the eruption of the super-volcano under Yellowstone, societal collapse from peak oil, etc?  I'll summarize for those unaware: the likelihood is razor thin.  These people are living their entire lives for a fraction of one percent.  It's simply gambling unreasonable amounts of money and time for the sake of bad information and fear.
  
Now I'm sure that things like the US losing economic power, society slowly moving in a liberalized direction, and religion losing orthodox believers make it seem like the world as we know it is about to end.  But if we can learn anything from history then we can understand that things change, and after the changes occur people still exist, the world is still intact, and apocalyptic prophesies are proven wrong.  Even after applying this simple logic, I can hear the apologists chiming in: 
"Yeah. those past predictions were wrong because they didn't have the full truth".
"You're taking their words out of context, when they said: 'the end of the world' they meant..."
"The phrase 'the last generation' was just metaphorical then, but today's last generation is really the last one".
All I hear from this is heavy doses of psychological phenomena I believe are called informational influence and confirmation bias.  

Listen, I know that when your political hero doesn't win it can be devastating.  When the US seems to be taking a direction that you believe is incorrect a common instinct is to fall back on doomsday prophesies and apocalyptic-speak.  I don't think that the world (or the US for that matter) is ripe for destruction or is teetering on the brink of an omnipotent-being's vindictive wrath.  The world is just changing.  So far humanity has only gotten better since as far back as we can remember.  The world is more full of knowledge, safety, compassion, equality, and health than it has ever been before.  Even governments have slowly evolved from large slaving-organizations to compassionate-like wills of the parent societies.  

Please stop all this nonsense about the world being at the brink of the end times.  In four years when the Republicans and Democrats fight over the same political and social issues, people that are wailing about society's imminent downfall will look a little foolish.

Peace and love all. Pics of the finished Wood Elves coming up later this weekend.