God will end the world of course. I guess that isn’t the end of man but the end of the world.
@dstne said in #12:
> God will end the world of course. I guess that isn’t the end of man but the end of the world.
Of course?
It doesn't seem so obvious to me.
People have been "predicting" the end of the world (often predicted to occur within their own expected lifetime) for nearly two millennia (2000 years!) now. Despite the fact that Abrahamic religions are what appears to be the major driver of most of these predictions, I see no reason why similar predictions of impending doom could not have been made since antiquity (and even prehistoric time). Even if little to no historic records of them exist (after all, why would you keep track of failed predictions via an oral tradition?).
Anyways, looking at a (non-exhaustive) list like this one shows that hundreds (likely thousands) of failed end-time predictions have been made, often even revised (several times) when they didn't occur only to fail and fail and fail again:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events#First_millennium_CE
"Be afraid, we're living in the end times! Judgment day is immediately upon us!", it echos through (at least) two-thousand years of history. And even to this very day there are many people (in some countries up to 22% of the population!) who believe that the world will end in THEIR lifetime, just like the 100 (!) generations of their forebears believed before them (assuming a generation length of 20 years).
Picture the line of those one hundred or so ancestors for a second, each so confident that SURELY theirs would be the end times, thinking to themselves that things have never been worse, that the horrors and moral depravity of THEIR time certainly mean that the end is nigh. There are very, very old (2300 to 4000 years old) examples of people bemoaning the deteriorating state of the world and the moral decline of their society (especially of the youth):
history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-the-oldest-authentic-example-of-people-complaining-about-modern-times-an
Well, they've ALL been wrong. Yet apocalypticism is alive and well in modern societies (as recently as 2022 – probably influenced by the coronavirus pandemic – as many as 39% of US Americans believed they were living in the end times according to Pew Research Center).
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd presume this to be a consequence of our self-importance, our lack of humility, our tendency to believe that the world revolves around us.
This would all be very cute if it weren't the case that apocalypticism can have very bad consequences like apathy, a sense of drifting towards an inevitable destiny that cannot be altered, a lack of regard for the well-being of others and especially future generations (don't have to care about what world your grandchildren will inherit if you don't believe the world to still be around by then), a lack of motivation for actually facing the real problems of the world and working towards fixing them. Just to name a few.
Why not instead admit that nobody knows for certain when (or even if) the world will ever end (at all)? Why not live your life as if yours was but one of trillions of human lives to come (maybe more), as if the world would never ever end?
Why not face up to the responsibility that you have of making this world a better place for everyone, of leaving a good Earth for those that may come after you? Why not make it a habit of trying to fix things here and now, of helping each other out, be active? At worst you're wrong and the world surprisingly ends anyways. Only then it will end in a much better state as if you had remained inactive. At best, the world will continue to become better and better over time.
I hope it's clear that I don't use the word "you" here to mean you specifically (I don't know you and perhaps you're already living your life this way). And I don't mean to lecture anyone. Just food for thought. Apocalypticism should not dictate how anyone lives their life.
> God will end the world of course. I guess that isn’t the end of man but the end of the world.
Of course?
It doesn't seem so obvious to me.
People have been "predicting" the end of the world (often predicted to occur within their own expected lifetime) for nearly two millennia (2000 years!) now. Despite the fact that Abrahamic religions are what appears to be the major driver of most of these predictions, I see no reason why similar predictions of impending doom could not have been made since antiquity (and even prehistoric time). Even if little to no historic records of them exist (after all, why would you keep track of failed predictions via an oral tradition?).
Anyways, looking at a (non-exhaustive) list like this one shows that hundreds (likely thousands) of failed end-time predictions have been made, often even revised (several times) when they didn't occur only to fail and fail and fail again:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events#First_millennium_CE
"Be afraid, we're living in the end times! Judgment day is immediately upon us!", it echos through (at least) two-thousand years of history. And even to this very day there are many people (in some countries up to 22% of the population!) who believe that the world will end in THEIR lifetime, just like the 100 (!) generations of their forebears believed before them (assuming a generation length of 20 years).
Picture the line of those one hundred or so ancestors for a second, each so confident that SURELY theirs would be the end times, thinking to themselves that things have never been worse, that the horrors and moral depravity of THEIR time certainly mean that the end is nigh. There are very, very old (2300 to 4000 years old) examples of people bemoaning the deteriorating state of the world and the moral decline of their society (especially of the youth):
history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-the-oldest-authentic-example-of-people-complaining-about-modern-times-an
Well, they've ALL been wrong. Yet apocalypticism is alive and well in modern societies (as recently as 2022 – probably influenced by the coronavirus pandemic – as many as 39% of US Americans believed they were living in the end times according to Pew Research Center).
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd presume this to be a consequence of our self-importance, our lack of humility, our tendency to believe that the world revolves around us.
This would all be very cute if it weren't the case that apocalypticism can have very bad consequences like apathy, a sense of drifting towards an inevitable destiny that cannot be altered, a lack of regard for the well-being of others and especially future generations (don't have to care about what world your grandchildren will inherit if you don't believe the world to still be around by then), a lack of motivation for actually facing the real problems of the world and working towards fixing them. Just to name a few.
Why not instead admit that nobody knows for certain when (or even if) the world will ever end (at all)? Why not live your life as if yours was but one of trillions of human lives to come (maybe more), as if the world would never ever end?
Why not face up to the responsibility that you have of making this world a better place for everyone, of leaving a good Earth for those that may come after you? Why not make it a habit of trying to fix things here and now, of helping each other out, be active? At worst you're wrong and the world surprisingly ends anyways. Only then it will end in a much better state as if you had remained inactive. At best, the world will continue to become better and better over time.
I hope it's clear that I don't use the word "you" here to mean you specifically (I don't know you and perhaps you're already living your life this way). And I don't mean to lecture anyone. Just food for thought. Apocalypticism should not dictate how anyone lives their life.
@Thalassokrator said in #13:
> Of course?
> It doesn't seem so obvious to me.
>
> People have been "predicting" the end of the world (often predicted to occur within their own expected lifetime) for nearly two millennia (2000 years!) now. Despite the fact that Abrahamic religions are what appears to be the major driver of most of these predictions, I see no reason why similar predictions of impending doom could not have been made since antiquity (and even prehistoric time). Even if little to no historic records of them exist (after all, why would you keep track of failed predictions via an oral tradition?).
> Anyways, looking at a (non-exhaustive) list like this one shows that hundreds (likely thousands) of failed end-time predictions have been made, often even revised (several times) when they didn't occur only to fail and fail and fail again:
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events#First_millennium_CE
>
> "Be afraid, we're living in the end times! Judgment day is immediately upon us!", it echos through (at least) two-thousand years of history. And even to this very day there are many people (in some countries up to 22% of the population!) who believe that the world will end in THEIR lifetime, just like the 100 (!) generations of their forebears believed before them (assuming a generation length of 20 years).
>
> Picture the line of those one hundred or so ancestors for a second, each so confident that SURELY theirs would be the end times, thinking to themselves that things have never been worse, that the horrors and moral depravity of THEIR time certainly mean that the end is nigh. There are very, very old (2300 to 4000 years old) examples of people bemoaning the deteriorating state of the world and the moral decline of their society (especially of the youth):
> history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-the-oldest-authentic-example-of-people-complaining-about-modern-times-an
>
> Well, they've ALL been wrong. Yet apocalypticism is alive and well in modern societies (as recently as 2022 – probably influenced by the coronavirus pandemic – as many as 39% of US Americans believed they were living in the end times according to Pew Research Center).
> If I had to hazard a guess, I'd presume this to be a consequence of our self-importance, our lack of humility, our tendency to believe that the world revolves around us.
> This would all be very cute if it weren't the case that apocalypticism can have very bad consequences like apathy, a sense of drifting towards an inevitable destiny that cannot be altered, a lack of regard for the well-being of others and especially future generations (don't have to care about what world your grandchildren will inherit if you don't believe the world to still be around by then), a lack of motivation for actually facing the real problems of the world and working towards fixing them. Just to name a few.
>
> Why not instead admit that nobody knows for certain when (or even if) the world will ever end (at all)? Why not live your life as if yours was but one of trillions of human lives to come (maybe more), as if the world would never ever end?
> Why not face up to the responsibility that you have of making this world a better place for everyone, of leaving a good Earth for those that may come after you? Why not make it a habit of trying to fix things here and now, of helping each other out, be active? At worst you're wrong and the world surprisingly ends anyways. Only then it will end in a much better state as if you had remained inactive. At best, the world will continue to become better and better over time.
>
> I hope it's clear that I don't use the word "you" here to mean you specifically (I don't know you and perhaps you're already living your life this way). And I don't mean to lecture anyone. Just food for thought. Apocalypticism should not dictate how anyone lives their life.
Thanks for clarifying at the end there. I don't necessarily believe that the end times are now, or very soon, however what people believe has little to no bearing on what will happen. For example, if I were to have lived in the first century, and said that some form of world ending weapon would be developed in my lifetime, and that doesn't happen (which it didn't), that is not good evidence to site that a weapon such as this would never be developed (such as the nuclear bomb). Similarly, just because everyone has been saying that the end times would be soon for thousands of years has no bearing on the actual date of the end times. I personally don't have an opinion on the timing of the end times, however I do believe in my previously stated method by which the end times will come about.
> Of course?
> It doesn't seem so obvious to me.
>
> People have been "predicting" the end of the world (often predicted to occur within their own expected lifetime) for nearly two millennia (2000 years!) now. Despite the fact that Abrahamic religions are what appears to be the major driver of most of these predictions, I see no reason why similar predictions of impending doom could not have been made since antiquity (and even prehistoric time). Even if little to no historic records of them exist (after all, why would you keep track of failed predictions via an oral tradition?).
> Anyways, looking at a (non-exhaustive) list like this one shows that hundreds (likely thousands) of failed end-time predictions have been made, often even revised (several times) when they didn't occur only to fail and fail and fail again:
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events#First_millennium_CE
>
> "Be afraid, we're living in the end times! Judgment day is immediately upon us!", it echos through (at least) two-thousand years of history. And even to this very day there are many people (in some countries up to 22% of the population!) who believe that the world will end in THEIR lifetime, just like the 100 (!) generations of their forebears believed before them (assuming a generation length of 20 years).
>
> Picture the line of those one hundred or so ancestors for a second, each so confident that SURELY theirs would be the end times, thinking to themselves that things have never been worse, that the horrors and moral depravity of THEIR time certainly mean that the end is nigh. There are very, very old (2300 to 4000 years old) examples of people bemoaning the deteriorating state of the world and the moral decline of their society (especially of the youth):
> history.stackexchange.com/questions/28169/what-is-the-oldest-authentic-example-of-people-complaining-about-modern-times-an
>
> Well, they've ALL been wrong. Yet apocalypticism is alive and well in modern societies (as recently as 2022 – probably influenced by the coronavirus pandemic – as many as 39% of US Americans believed they were living in the end times according to Pew Research Center).
> If I had to hazard a guess, I'd presume this to be a consequence of our self-importance, our lack of humility, our tendency to believe that the world revolves around us.
> This would all be very cute if it weren't the case that apocalypticism can have very bad consequences like apathy, a sense of drifting towards an inevitable destiny that cannot be altered, a lack of regard for the well-being of others and especially future generations (don't have to care about what world your grandchildren will inherit if you don't believe the world to still be around by then), a lack of motivation for actually facing the real problems of the world and working towards fixing them. Just to name a few.
>
> Why not instead admit that nobody knows for certain when (or even if) the world will ever end (at all)? Why not live your life as if yours was but one of trillions of human lives to come (maybe more), as if the world would never ever end?
> Why not face up to the responsibility that you have of making this world a better place for everyone, of leaving a good Earth for those that may come after you? Why not make it a habit of trying to fix things here and now, of helping each other out, be active? At worst you're wrong and the world surprisingly ends anyways. Only then it will end in a much better state as if you had remained inactive. At best, the world will continue to become better and better over time.
>
> I hope it's clear that I don't use the word "you" here to mean you specifically (I don't know you and perhaps you're already living your life this way). And I don't mean to lecture anyone. Just food for thought. Apocalypticism should not dictate how anyone lives their life.
Thanks for clarifying at the end there. I don't necessarily believe that the end times are now, or very soon, however what people believe has little to no bearing on what will happen. For example, if I were to have lived in the first century, and said that some form of world ending weapon would be developed in my lifetime, and that doesn't happen (which it didn't), that is not good evidence to site that a weapon such as this would never be developed (such as the nuclear bomb). Similarly, just because everyone has been saying that the end times would be soon for thousands of years has no bearing on the actual date of the end times. I personally don't have an opinion on the timing of the end times, however I do believe in my previously stated method by which the end times will come about.
The growing tendency to flock rather than think.
I'm betting it will be Amazon Prime.
I change my mind. It will be the growing tendency to respond with emojis rather than reasoned discourse..
Not one thing but many,
Artificial Intelligence,
Belief in "authorities",
toxins, pandemics, cancer, horsey,
and so on
Artificial Intelligence,
Belief in "authorities",
toxins, pandemics, cancer, horsey,
and so on
Horsey? Horsey is a force for good!
