And I Feel Fine

I’m not going to talk about the end of the world, except sideways and stiltedly. Of course I don’t expect the world to end today. I don’t expect the world to end ANY day.

One day the world will end for me, of course. One day the world will end for each of us. But despite all the planet killing events that are possible, I don’t really expect an end to everyone at the same time. Or perhaps it would be more true to say I don’t want to the world to end for everyone at the same time.

Honestly, even in times when I wish otherwise, I’m a woman of very little faith. I hope there is life after death, I don’t see any reason not to believe there isn’t – just like I see no proof there is, though there are a couple of borderline experiences that prove it sufficiently for ME personally, but not enough to prove to anyone else. I have a vague idea of what might be on the other side – if anything – but wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got it completely wrong. Sooner or later I’ll find out. I try to live in a way that if what’s on the other side is an eternity alone with my thoughts, I won’t have too many regrets. (Some are inevitable in the human condition.)

But I believe in life after death – firmly. Need to – in the sense that I believe life will go on after my death. You see, it might be a failing, but I like people. Most people. The vast majority of them who are fairly decent and mind their own business and try to do what they can with what they have. And I’d like to think that millenia from now, when my remains would qualify as an archeological find, there will be families living on Earth, kids laughing, elders complaining, human individuals going after their lawful business.

I do realize that the Earth too will eventually have an end, and I hope we have managed to go to another world, another star by then. I know most species have ends, like individuals do, but I hope if we must end it will be because our descendants have mutated and are better than us, but still us in a way.

It’s weird that I need to believe these things, that I WANT to believe these things, because it was not how I was raised. I grew up believing not only that there would be an end of the world (NOT Christian theology, though disguised that way, because the insertion of “our lady” doesn’t make any sense in those stories. I suspect it was ORIGINALLY “Our Lady” Ballaat, in Phoenician, but I don’t have proof of that either, just the fact that their footprints are all through the area I grew up in. But at any rate, the stories made no reference to the Bible, except to mention the deluge which appears in almost all western legends.) but that the world had already ended several times. “World” understood of course as most of humanity except for a family or two, and world as “civilization.”

My grandmother raised me in the first belief I would live through the next end of the world. She rather pitied me for this, but the wisdom that she’d received from her grandmother indicated it would happen in my generation.

You see, when the Lord created the world THIS time – understood I think as the grand clean up after the last end, though I don’t know I got the impression this was a new planet too. Gee, no wonder I write science fiction and fantasy – He set it in spin and said “Till the year two thousand you shall last, and over two thousand you shall not go.” (Shut up now. I assume omniscience and all, he referred to the year 2000 of the current date. Or at least my grandmother did. I don’t remember giving it much thought, and yes, even at four or so I KNEW the world was more than two thousand years old, because I liked stories of Greece and Rome.) And then Our Lady (See what I mean about it not being a Christian story?) Got a handful of dirt (cosmic dirt?) And threw it over the earth and said “I add these many years.”

Now, maybe she had very dainty hands, because my grandmother didn’t thing it would be more than a couple of decades.

I know this sounds insane to people not raised this way, but I used to spend hours planning what to do and how to survive when the end of the world came – in fire, this time, of course, because Our Lady was distressed by seeing so many drowned babies floating on the waves after the deluge.

I can’t tell you when I stopped assuming the world would have a very definite end for everyone at the same time. The corollary for the other “doesn’t accord to facts” idea I grew up with, that “there have been many civilizations before ours and some more advanced” I’ve never quite managed to shake. Oh, I try. I know it’s not rational. But it’s there all the time at the back of my mind, and I keep trying to figure out the type of story that would “explain” or justify this feeling.

By ten I definitely no longer believed in an “end of the world” – but then we were in the seventies and, oh, my, other people did. End of the world and UFOs and… the silly season in full bloom. (I almost spelled that fool bloom.)

So what is this in the service of? Nothing. Just noting that predictions of the end of the world have always been with us, and some cult or sect is always proclaiming it. Remember the Heaven Gate cult? The world ended for them.

I find it unusual that this time the prophecy is receiving so much air play. Part of it is that I think it’s oddly escapist. “If the world ends, I don’t need to worry about my mortgage being upside down anymore” kind of escapist – just like the inanities of the seventies. (For the record, I’m even willing to endure elephant bells to escape the end of the world, but please refrain.) I think there’s an hysteria to it, an air of “Save us, end of the world, you’re our only hope.” The other part of it is that the stories are fun, in the middle of distressing news about the world and our economy.

It’s of course, entirely possible the world will end today – or any day — but I rather doubt it. A world-wide Earthquake seems a difficult thing to achieve.

But I hope it doesn’t. I hope the world and humanity goes on for a long time after I’m gone – World Without End.

*Crossposted at Classical Values*