It’s The End Of The World As We Know It
And I Feel Fine¹
We are living in record-breaking times. Record temperatures in arctic Siberia, record number of new Corona cases, records in businesses being closed, unemployment, anger, violence, helplessness, international and political tensions. Is the world falling apart?
Apocalypse Now
As umair haque wrote recently, “the end of human civilization is now easy enough to see, over the next three to five decades. It’s made of climate change, mass extinction, ecological collapse, and the economic depressions, financial implosions, political upheavals, pandemics, plagues, floods, fires, and social breakdowns all those will ignite.”
Umair is not alone. Here is short compilation of similar pessimistic analyses. Jackie Thornhill — The End of the World, Maria Farrell — How to Cope with the End of the World, Bryan Walsh — A Brief Guide to the End of the World.
Some are more optimistic. In Are We Nearing the End of the World? Kevin Ashton argues that humanity will persevere just as it had survived the Bubonic plague, the black death and other catastrophes. And others yet, like dczook and Matt J Weber and I guess many of us, prefer to joke about it.
A Bang or a Whimper? (some nostalgia)
T.S. Eliot’s poem from 1925, The Hollow Men, ends with the words:
“This is the way the world will end, not with a bang but with a whimper”
In the 1990s I was a young researcher at the well known AT&T Bell Labs. The vice-president of Bell Labs research at the time was Arno Penzias, a Nobel laureate in physics. Together with Robert Woodrow Wilson, Arno discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology. One of the things Arno was known for was giving a red T-shirt as a token of appreciation for some special achievement, with the following slogan, referencing Eliot’s poem:
“This is the way the world began, not with a whimper but with a bang!”
I recall how proud I was when given such a T-shirt for what I thought was a minor contribution. I never wore it though. It was too small. :-)
Many people feel we are witnessing the whimper of the end of the world. They are pointing at the symptoms. But if we diagnose the disease, we will also find the cure. Then we will realize all the noise we are hearing is the bang associated with the beginning of a new world.
A Time for Reflection
Yes, the old world is going away. This should not be a surprise either. Humanity was on a self-destructive course, and recent estimates for “how long we have left” vary between 20–80 years. We can see how our egoistic systems and institutions are failing at an accelerated pace. Consumerism cannot satisfy us. Money and government are not working anymore. And like a little child in a dark place humanity is searching for something to hold on to, some familiar toy to hug. This is all good. There is something new in the air, waiting to be born.
After we peel off ourselves all the artificial and redundant layers we have obsessively accumulated over the years, when the dust settles down, what will we discover?
A brand new world. One in which we provide our body with what it needs, but not with unhealthy excess. We shift our attention to fulfilling our soul, learning through integral education about the richness and joy found in our relationships. Our life is meaningful because we invest it in others rather then wasting it on ourselves. We are in harmony with the whole of nature and share its infinite wisdom.
Our only illness is the ego. The cure is connection. And every end is a new beginning.
- In the subtitle I didn’t mean to be cynical. It is a reference to the R.E.M song It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (and I feel fine)
- The “3K” on the T-Shirt represents the “3 degrees above zero Kelvin” background radiation that Arno and Robert had detected.
