Argos Squadron

Room Rant #2

Apocalypse Nao.

Have your hard the word brother? No?

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore. Once again mankind has escaped the time of final judgment, leaving us all to carry on our mundane tasks while all manner of prophetic nutjobs will work out the next End of the World.

This is not the first time of course. The first time the world was supposed to end, was all they way back in A.D 1000. But nothing happened. And since then, a legion of religious figures, mad prophets, would-be-psychics and aliens have been trying to guess on what date the Apocalypse has been moved to. A.D 2000, 6th day of sixth month of sixth year of new millennium, 2012 – all sorts of less or more memorable dates. And every time, we’re left to laugh at hysterics that wholesomely believe that stuff.


Of course, the fascination with end of all time should not be particularly surprising. A man’s life has a beginning and an end – invariably we all die, and will continue to do until science will do something horrible.

And to make himself feel better, Man looks for a familiar patterns around him. Death and rebirth is the most obvious and ancient one, so we readily apply it to our world: A civilization has it’s beginning, so surely, it must have an end.
What does make me wonder however, is why so many prophecies seem to fixated on idea that The End will be painful, fiery and generally, very, very destructive. It might have to do something with the fact that many religions (and Roman Catholicism in particular) link end to ultimate showdown of ultimate evil and ultimate good, with our good †˜ol Earth ending up as a collateral damage.


I suppose, this is a prime example of good †˜ol fear-mongering, with wizen old virgin priests hoping that fear of our mortal bodies and souls will herd us to their sermons and fill up the donations box.
Thankfully, this is working less and less as of late.

But you do have to wonder why “end” is always portrayed as painful and agonizing, yet rarely a beginning to something new.

The entire affair about Mayan calendar is a prime example of that. Everyone thinks that with its end, the world will be set on fire and we will all die.

Uuuuuuuhhhhh, come again? Because Mayans themselves didn’t think that.

To Mayan’s “the end” meant more in categories “events will reshape the world, and it will never be the same again”. Specifically, it babbles something about mankind having a shift in understanding and coming closer to perfection than ever before. So in a way, world “ends” but is replaced by something else. No big deal. It’s in fact, the most positive Apocalypse, ever.

In fact, we even misuse the term “Apocalypse” because it doesn’t mean the end of the world. It’s literal meaning is “The lifting of evil” which is something, as far as I understand it, a positive thing.

But it seems the idea that future will be better, eventually, is still unacceptable to many. Naturally, as I said in my previous rant, being positive is rather hard when you’re bombed with bad news, but then again nothing will change if you will continue to mop around.

So if anything, we should embrace the Apocalypse, but not as a symbol of fiery doom, but of a catharsis a spiritual purge that will make world a slight better place – and which doesn’t necessitate bombardment with hellfire and brimstones.

And while we’re at it, what makes one premise of a dreadful prophecy any more credible than all the others? Think about it – in over several thousand years that mankind existed as a civilized species not even *one* end of the world prophecy came true. Or most prophecies in the world, for that matter. Except Nostradamus – and that’s because his fortune-telling is so vague, that we’re able to apply it virtually every single event. So yeah.


Universe is not so convenient place as to lay out its fate is a series of silly prophecies that tell us step-by-step of what will happen.
Even if fact that our galaxy is perfectly symmetrical does make one wonder about that…

At any rate, that is all. Now, allow me to go back to some other, presumably incredibly vital task.