The End of the Road: On Doomfreaks

“The future is an inherently good thing. And we move into it one winter at a time. Things get better one winter at a time. If you're going to celebrate anything, then have a drink on this: The world is, generally and on balance, a better place to live this year than it was last year.” -Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan

The word of the day is “doomfreak,” and there are many clogging up the thin-walled arteries of the world these days.

People have been talking about the End of the World since the idea came up that it might have an end. Talk of Divine Wrath and swarths of fire purging the land of all living things and (my personal favorite among the lot) all the Gods in the heavens strapping on their best armor and kicking the shit out of each other just because they decided it might as well be now. Ragnarok is a hell of a story to read, but depressing on a fundamental level. Fatalism never sat very well with me.

Now we have two groups of neo-fatalists gearing up for the Great Fuck-All. Among the New Agers and burnt-out hippies and the fashionably spiritual but most CERTAINLY not religious thank-you-very-much we have the folks who cry out “2012!” The whole idea is based on the dated speculation of Michael Coe, an old Mayan scholar who noticed some scribblings talking about the end of a Great Cycle. A few calculations later and Coe found that the Great Cycle would come full-circle on December 21st, 2012, and he noted that the end of the Great Cycle had a kind of apocalyptic quality to it. Current Mayan scholars tend to agree that Coe, while significant, was, in academic terms, completely fucking wrong. The Great Cycle holds, they say, either not much significance or it acts as some big festival. Looking into the 2012 ideas a little more, useless and frightening phrases like “galactic alignment” and “timewave zero” crop up. The ideas are shaky, based on facts pulled out of the ether found only in the topmost portion of the human rectum. There is also talk of a new magnetic alignment, of global catastrophe, and so much forth. Doom, gloom, madness, mayhem, and none of it really worth thinking about.

The ones that have been lighting a fire under my ass the past few months are the followers of Harold Camping, a mummified radioman who felt like beating the rush and put forth the idea that the Rapture, a concept among Christians that the Truly Faithful would all be taken into the Heavens so they could stuff their faces with celestial popcorn while the world they inhabited not too long ago shit itself to death, would take place in May of 2011. Harold, in addition to being a favorite of the more rambling and senile school of Biblical teaching, is notable for claiming that the Rapture would occur sometime in 1994. Over the past 15 years, he's been re-examining his “math” and discovered his error. He is absolutely positive on this date, something that all of you should find and record evidence of, for when your more gullible friends want their money back. Mr. Camping puts his justification for all the world to see on www.ebiblefellowship.com and I openly invite all my readers to try and make any fucking sense of it at all. I've been staring at it for what feels like months now, and it always comes out the same way; pull numbers out of ass, throw at Bible, get Doomsday.

But what bothers me so much isn't these people playing on the fear and stupidity of others; for shit's sake, I follow politics like it's the goddamn football season. What bothers me is the attitude of not even ambivalence, but mean, malicious delight at the thought of our planet going up in flames. This was one of my original beefs with The Church, and it hasn't changed much over time. For people to talk about the Boundless Love of the Creator/Father/SkyDaddy one minute and the absolute and never-ending shitrain you will find yourself in if you don't start loving Him right fucking now the next is inherently Wrong on a deep level, but to look at the world today and think “It'll all be over soon, and this whole place will burn to the ground,” and leave it at that? We are aware today to a degree that even science fiction writers wouldn't speculate on fifty years ago. We have developed by leaps and bounds not only in terms of what we have created, but in terms of our ability to create, and to destroy, and to COMPREHEND. We, as a species, are finally Getting It. The right amount of Fear has married with the right amount of Understanding and Awareness to start the gestation of a genuinely good place for the first time in centuries, if ever. The fact that, at this very moment, we have instantaneous access to the collective summation of human knowledge astounds me to a degree that I can't begin to put into words. No one, myself included, would think to argue that the world doesn't have its problems. But the activities in Libya, in Egypt, in Wisconsin and Bahrain and London make me think that we KNOW these problems, and that, since we know, we can conquer them.

And you want to leave it to burn?

Humanity is a beautiful thing. We have done great damage in our time here, but we have also made great beauty. But none of that matters. No, see the problems and then close your eyes and wait for reality to go to sleep forever. By no means better what you see. By no means try and solve a problem. No. Stand there. Stay very still. Wait for the signal. Do nothing in the meantime. And give me money, so that I may continue to spread this message and buy a new fucking Corvette in the meantime.

I don't give half a shit for the justification these doomfreaks shoulder. This bleak Messianic fuckheadery is the most poisonous, most foul, most fucking sick line of thinking out there today. Even the deep-fried thrice-inbred backwater types who think that all the A-rabs ought to be blown back to the stone age are at least of the idea that something ought to be done. The tragic misguidance there is nothing unlimited access to a public library and maybe a good chemical castration can't fix. But to sit there, knowing that things are fucked, knowing that we May Be Doomed, and DO NOTHING ABOUT IT, and look forward to the day it all closes shop? That, dear readers, is what's wrong with the world today. Have your Paradise when you're dead if you want, but in the meantime, leave your mark and help clean up, for the young kids who have to shoulder the burden you feel like passing.

So much for all of that. You know, I could talk on about how these people are wrong, and why they're wrong, but that's all besides the point. This is our world now. We have taken it as our responsibility, for better or for worse, and I see out of all the sick twisted news a growing thread of hope that maybe, just maybe, we might be getting better at this. And if God Himself wants to step down from On High, Rod and Staff in hand with a choir of fat, evil-eyed Cherubim cheering Him on as he looks down on the Earth and says “YOU'VE HAD A GOOD RUN, BUT IT'S TIME TO PACK IT UP. YOU LOT, COME WITH ME, THE REST, I'LL BE BACK IN A BIT,” I think our reaction should be fairly clear. We, as a species, as one entity that is HUMAN, should band together, break down national and cultural barriers, combine every resource we have, and...

Kill Him. Kill the motherfucker where he stands. This is our world, and I will proudly go for the throat of God to keep it that way. Fear no evil. Be proud. Walk tall, and kick ass.

-Tambour