Apocalypse Not

I'm going to cross a small line here and bring in a few personal moments in this one, which will also get Mildly Political (but not wholly whiffing from sports). Y'all have been warned; feel free to skip and/or print it out and take it with you to the can.

In the early parts of the 1800s in the United States, a doomsday cult developed in the MidAtlantic and New England states that eventually became so popular, it reached near mainstream acceptance. The Millerites, as they were called, studied the book of Daniel, always a good source for this kind of thing, to do the math, then determined that the end of the world was coming up fast. So fast, in fact, that they were able to predict it to the day. (Odd, that it's never a long time from now.)

Tens of thousands grouped on what the faith's elders called "Ascension Rock" to greet the incoming cherubim, only to go home shortly after dawn when nothing happened. (Yes, to be in the crowd must have been like being an Eagles fan during one of the NFC championship game home losses. I hate my brain.)

Amazingly, the church was able to regroup all of its followers and grow with the story that they had simply made a counting error, and that the Apocalypse was definitely coming this time, like the Great Pumpkin, just one year later. In the weeks coming up to the big event, farms lay fallow, cows were not milked, people stopped bathing or eating or doing anything other than waiting. I'm thinking the crowd reaction to the second straight whiff was less than happy.

After the second straight no-show, the faith disbanded, and finding anyone who wanted to admit to their Millerite faith was like finding a Red Sox fan who still thinks they should have kept Nomah, Pedro and Manny. More tellingly since then, no doomsday religion has made the tactical error of calling their shot on the Apocalypse. It's always close (how's next Tuesday for you), but never on the calendar. Heck, maybe it already happened via a Rapture of the nice folks. I work in marketing and advertising, and haven't really missed anyone, but that's no proof.

A few weeks ago at my monthly poker game (seats available, email me), someone brought up the Left Behind series of books, and how he started seeing spooky parallels to current events. The LB series, in case you are unaware, is a series of novels that start from Revelations-style predictions of future miseries, then shows how they might come to pass in a more modern skew. It's wildly popular in its niche market, and as a matter of record, I've actually written ads for it, because when work asks me to make them money, that's what I do. Anyway.

The group more or less moved away from it pretty quickly, but seeing how it was the first time the books were ever discussed near me without a sense of irony or commercialism, it didn't go very far. People read what they want to read.

Earlier this week, in an IM conversation with a friend about politics, I learned that his mother thinks that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Hmm, well, wow, I thought, and tried to commiserate with how difficult it must be to have a parent who is working with that kind of delusion. Seriously, if Obama's the Antichrist, I'd have expected Hilary and Bill Clinton to have exploded into flame in, like, February. Give the A-C some credit here.

The Shooter Mom, like most women of her generation, strongly preferred Hilary but will vote for Obama. She also has any number of close relatives of her age group who like to forward her all of those e-mails you've been hearing about, where Obama is perceived as, well, the Antichrist.

Now, I don't want to get into the particulars of Obama-McCain here; I'm pretty sure that most regular readers of the blog know where I am on that. What I'm looking to touch on more is this need that many of us have for it to be The End of Days.

Whether it's (I'm going to make regular reader CMJDad very happy here, not that he's still reading) global warming, the specter of an Obama, Clinton, Bush or McCain Presidency, the Eagles failing to sign a true #1 WR, gasoline and grocery and local taxes going up while the value of your home goes down... there's always going to be people losing their stones over it and thinking Life Will Never Be The Same. I'm pretty sure you get this at work, too, especially in a down economy. Coping with the uncertainties of an uncaring world is damned deadly difficult, and whether your coping mechanisms are vice or virtue doesn't really change that.

But what's really going on, at the heart of Apocalyptic thinking, is fairly profound selfishness and self-centeredness.

We all know that we're going to move on from this consciousness at some point, and that the amount of time we have left is more or less uncertain. We can influence this with good choices and better luck, but it's mostly just that -- an influence, not a real control. What happens next is entirely subject to your beliefs, but Life Will Go On Without You...

Unless, of course, all life ends with you. Which is the sad little comfort of Apocalypse, isn't it? No loneliness.

It is easy for me (and in all likelihood, given the site's demographics, you) to go down this thought path. By the numbers, many of us probably haven't used more than a third to half of our time. Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm looking more realistically at 80 to 90% gone, and strange-sounding people and dire predictions coming at me from every source of "news." I'd really like to hope not.

The Apocalypse is upon us, folks, because it's always been upon us. It's there, in the back of our minds, all of the time. It's that part of you that throws a rod over someone cutting you off in traffic, or making you wait at the supermarket. It's the knowledge that without us, work would suffer, our loved ones would fall apart, and the won-loss records of sports team and political candidates has something (anything?) to do with our hopes and dreams.

They don't. They won't. For the most part, we're just not that important. Get over yourselves.

And be happy anyway. It's not the end of the world.