Why are we so obsessed with Doom, Armageddon and the End of the World?

Before I begin I will freely admit to thinking on these lines at times, but it seems to be a pleasurable and profitable hobby for some to predict how the end of man, the end of humanity, the end of the world will come to pass. Why is it throughout history, one of the key main factors occupying a humans mind is the end of everything and subsequent attempt to change everything, in so doing stopping the end of the world.

Is it a convenient untruth to think on these lines, to constantly create fear and anxiety, throughout the planet?

As long as I can remember something is going to kill us all, first it was nuclear weapons, an obvious humanity killer. Then we have had ice ages, global warming, terrorism, population growth, bird flu, lethal virus’s, oh and who can forget the stupidest one of all 2012; how many times have they made documentaries showing the top ten, end of the world disasters?

You would think the people of western society; love to live in dread and worry, contemplating things that have a likelihood of happening similar to you winning the lottery three times in a row.

Imagine that, someone tells you, you are going to win the lottery three times in a row, after how many lottery purchases would you say, sorry mate you’re talking bullshit. I would think millennia of being told the world is ending without it ending will make people start to think, umm let’s not bother to listen, because its rubbish.

The problem is as old (well no it’s a lot older) as the infamous fable, “the Boy who cried Wolf”. And to be honest this is the problem we have today, so many years, hundreds, thousands, probably tens of thousands of years of storytelling, lying, exaggerating, embellishing, whatever you want to call it, has left humanity complacent at the point of incredulity. We have become so complacent that we are forcing well meaning people to fall into the trap of creating erroneous, convoluted, extreme, stories in the vain attempt to make people realise the end of the world is nigh.

The problem we have as humans is this, how do we determine what is truth and what is fallacy? What is reality and what is myth? Is any of what they say true and then again if even a small part is what should we do about it?

If we are to believe what we see on the documentary channels, that the inevitable end is nigh, no wonder some people believe they can do what they want and act as they like.

In a weird way you have to say, it is quite a miracle that we as a species have survived as long as we have, with our creative imagination; it has its benefits but also its drawbacks, and it will take all our powers of self control not to actually one day prove all the doomsayers true and end the world. Until that day though, it would be nice if we could start to be more rational in our approach to the future and whether we are nearing the end. Wouldn’t that be nice.