Thursday, July 27, 2006

Have I been too pessimistic lately? You decide. Ray (Ray's X-Blog) counters some of the recent gloom -- and I hope he's right.





That said, perhaps humanity needs to be alarmed. Not to the point of impotent despair, but enough to be roused from its stupor.

Appearances aside, I'm not a defeatist. But I fear that too many of us are. After all, conceding that the "end is nigh" immediately absolves one from responsibility -- and that can be an enormously attractive, if lethal, prospect.

1 comment:

The Odd Emperor said...

I think it's perfectly natural to think about great world-spanning changes. It might even be healthy to worry about it a little. Where I tend to disagree is when people begin modifying their behavior as if the end of the world is inevitable. Those people have stopped living and are beginning a journey to their own ends. If people stop building, learning and creating they certainly killed their own world and by extension a little of yours and mine.

There are exceptions, one reason the Mormon church moved out to Utah was to witness the end of humanity. It didn’t happen and they went on to found Salt Lake City.