Hello, Dear Readers. It’s good to see you.
Just this past week, I heard that the world is supposed to come to an end on May 21st. My dad said that he heard it was May 20th, so already there’s some controversy brewing. I don’t actually know too much about this prediction except that I found out about it when I drove past the university in my town and saw a bunch of people with signs out marching around and yelling at passing cars about it. And of course, that struck me as a little strange. I mean, if the world really was coming to an end, would you spend your last days marching around with a sign and yelling at cars? I wouldn’t. I’d go get drunk. I think most people would go get drunk. So, until I walk out of my house and see pile after pile of drunk people lying around, I’m going to be a little skeptical about this end of the world stuff.
From what I understand, the guy who made this prediction based it all on Bible math, too. And apparently, that’s a type of math they don’t teach in school because most of the people who’ve tried to use it haven’t been very good at it. The current guy actually first predicted the end of the world back in 1994, but after it didn’t happen and everyone lived, he went back and rechecked his equations. Then he was just sort of like, “Oh, sorry, I made a mistake.” And it was probably something simple, too, like forgetting to carry over a two or subtracting something wrong. But this time, I think he used a calculator, so he’s pretty sure he’s got the numbers all worked out right. I suppose there’s something comforting about that.
Of course, he isn’t the first person to predict the end of world (either time he’s done it). The Mayan calendar says that the world will end December 21, 2012. I’m not sure at what time. I hope it’s sometime after 7 pm, though, so I have a chance to get in a few last reruns of Law and Order before I’m launched into oblivion. That probably sounds flippant, but I mean, seriously, how are you supposed to plan for the end of the world? What are you supposed to wear? Do you need to take two forms of ID? Will there be long lines? Should you bring a book? Does anyone ever take that kind of stuff into account when they’re predicting the demise of humanity? No. Does anyone ever publish an informational pamphlet or put together an instructional video? No. They announce the end of the world, and you’re just supposed to wing it from there. Personally, I don’t think that’s a very good plan.
The other thing that always struck me as odd about the end of world according to the Mayans is that it’s based on the end of the Mayan calendar. Now, I’m sure it’s a perfectly good calendar, but just because it ends, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole stinking world goes up with it. I mean, maybe the Mayan calendar maker just got tired of doing it. Maybe one day, he walked into his office, looked around, and went, “I hate this job. I want to learn to paint and be an artist instead.” So, he just quit making the calendar. Then when he got in trouble for it with his boss, he just made up some lie about how he’d finished the job because the world was going to end on the last date he’d worked out. And then his boss was probably like, “Oh, OK, well, thanks for your years of service to the Mayan people. Here’s a gold sundial. Have a nice life.” And that was that.
And have you ever noticed how people who predict the end of the world always predict it WAY far in advance of their own time? I mean, you never turn on the news and hear, “Floyd Feeney, noted mystic soothsayer of Paramus, New Jersey, has predicted that the world will end next Thursday at 2:15 pm, Eastern Standard Time.” No one ever predicts the end of the world within their own lifetime. That would be creepy. And inconvenient. Oh, sure, there’s always a crabby next-door neighbor who sits out on the patio ranting about how the world is going to hell in a hand basket and is going to come to a crashing halt “one of these days,” but that’s really not quite the same thing.
Personally, I think the end of the world is something that people predict far in the future so they don’t have to worry about it themselves. After all, the height of the Mayan civilization happened around 900 A.D., and they didn’t predict the end of world (however it happened) until 2012. So, it’s not like they spent a lot of time worrying about it themselves. I mean, what did they care? They didn’t walk around going, “We’d better hurry up and finish those temples. We’ve only got a thousand years left.” It’s sort of like how I feel about the Earth’s loss of rotational momentum. Yes, the Earth is slowing down. And, yes, that’s going to be a big problem. About a billion years from now. So, what do I care? I just need it to keep spinning for about 50 more years. Tops. After that, I don’t really give a rip if it spins or not. I figure that’s pretty much how the Mayans felt about the end of the world. It definitely fell into the category of “someone else’s problem.”
It’s funny, though, how fascinated people are with stuff like the end of the world. But I suppose that makes sense in a way. After all, if the world really is going to end on May 21st, I’m sure as hell not going to pay my phone bill. And I’m going to call up my credit card companies and tell them to take a flying leap. But I’m absolutely not doing any of that stuff unless I know for sure that the world is going to end I mean, I know there’s a country song that says that you should live like you’re dying, but unless you really are, it’s not that great of an idea.
But maybe the thing about why we’re so into the ends of things is just because we figure that anything that has a beginning also has to have an end. It’s hard to imagine one without the other. I mean, people go to a movie and wonder how it’s going to end. No one walks in and wonders if it’s going to end. No one ever stops and thinks, “Maybe I shouldn’t go into this theatre. Maybe this movie won’t end. Ever. And then I’ll have to stay here. For the rest of my life.” No one would ever go to the movies if it involved taking that kind of a risk. Luckily, our little human brains just don’t think that way. If something begins, then it eventually ends. That’s the deal.
And it’s amazing how much of our everyday lives is built on that idea. I think that’s one of the reasons why immortality isn’t such a great thing when you really stop to think about it. People always say stuff like how sad it would be to be immortal because all your friends would die before you did and because the love of your life wouldn’t last for your whole life. They tend to think of the big, emotional stuff. I wouldn’t want to be immortal because of the little things. I mean, the total percentage of my immortal life that I would have to spend waiting in line to renew my driver’s license would be staggering, and I can’t imagine what my VISA bill would look like after two or three hundred years. And it just scares me to think how much useless stuff I would buy over the course of a millennium or two. Someone would walk into my house a hundred years from now, pick up object, and ask, “Is this a priceless antique?” and I’d have to say, “No, it’s a Slap Chop. Would you like me to dice you an onion?”
And work would just be hell. At staff meetings, I’d hear the other employees whispering, “She never has any new ideas.” “Well, what do you expect? She’s been with the company for 350 years.” The worst part would be that I’d never have enough money to retire. I’d go in to see a financial advisor, and he’d say, “How much do you have in your retirement accounts at this point?” So, I’d show him my numbers, and he’d look them over and say, “Well, if you want to retire in five years, I think you’ve got plenty of…wait a sec, it says here on your form that you’re immortal.” “Yeah, that’s right.” “Oh, well, then this isn’t going to be nearly enough.” I mean, really, how do you finance eternity? So, I’d have this suckwad job…and I’d have to do it forever. That really is not my idea of bliss.
We also seem to have this idea that immortal beings are ageless. They aren’t. They’re deathless. That’s a different thing. There’s nothing saying that just because you don’t die you don’t age. And that would be terrible. I’m in my late 40s now, and just thinking about exercise wears me out. Imagine what I’d be like in my late 400s. I’d barely be able to drag myself off the couch…except that I’d have to so I could go to my suckwad job. Finally, one day I’d just call in sick, and the secretary would say, “And why can’t you come in today?” “Because I’m almost 500 years old, ya jackwagon. I’m tired.” And then she’d cover the receiver, but I’d hear, “She’s so crabby all the time.” “Well, don’t take it personally. According to her file, she’s been that way since the late Victorian period.”
Probably the worst part of being immortal, though, is that the neighborhood kids would constantly be trying to kill you. They wouldn’t believe that you were really immortal, and everyone would want to be the one who finally proved it. You’d be out in your yard, and some kid would come veering off the street and try to run you over. The more imaginative ones would try to blow up your house. The next-door neighbors would probably try to poison you. And all to no avail. Which would, of course, only make them try harder.
So, that would be life as an immortal person You’d have to drag yourself off your couch to go to a sucky job that you could never retire from, you’d have to sit through any number of insulting staff meetings, and then you’d go home to a house full of Slap Chops, Showtime Rotisserie Ovens, Miracle Blade sets, Magic Bullets, and assorted sizes of ShamWows. You’d be so wrinkly that people would often mistake you for a gigantic Shar-Pei, and you’d spend a fair amount of time at home tweezing grizzled gray billy goat hairs off your chin. And every time someone knocked at the door, it would be some teenager with a gun or a knife or baseball bat who came over to try to kill you. You’d spend most of your free time in the hospital, and trust me, no health insurance company would touch you with a ten-foot pole.
So, that’s the thing: the way we live is completely based on the idea of a beginning and an end. You’re born, you go to school and learn some stuff, you piddletinker around for a while and pretend you’re an artist, then you get a job, you piddletinker around for a while and pretend you’re a businessperson, then you retire, and eventually you die. That’s how it’s set up to work. A beginning, an end, and some stuff in between. That’s life as we know it, and we have a very hard time picturing it going any other way.
And maybe when all is said and done, that’s what makes the idea of the end of the world so strange. We get that things end. In fact, we expect them to. We just don’t expect all of them to end all at once. And that’s what makes the idea of everything ending at one time as unbelievable as the idea of things never ending at all. So, no, I don’t really think that the world is going to end on May 21st. But then again, as my father always says, “Plan for the worst. Hope for something slightly less horrible.” So, I guess this week would be a good time to go out and treat yourself to something special just in case the world actually is going to end on Saturday. And while you’re at it, you might as well pick up 10 or 20 bottles of wine. Personally, I’d recommend a nice pinot noir. I’ve always heard it goes well with an apocalypse.
Philosophy for a hungry planet.
Enjoy.
© R. Rissler, 2011. All rights reserved.
