Are the “End Times” upon us?
Omens of an Impending Apocalypse
I know this might sound crazy to many of you, but please do us both a favor and hear me out. The thing is that lately, I’ve been noticing a lot of disturbing patterns that are quite unsettling to me. Little things just keep adding up in my mind, more and more, even though I don’t want them to. That is to say, I keep thinking about things like the fact that the 14th Dalai Lama is refusing to reincarnate as the 15th, and how the 18th Bundle Keeper of the Great Sioux Nation warned that the 19th might be the last. Granted, as of the time of this writing, the 14th Dalai Lama and the 19th Bundle Keeper are still alive, but for how long? Better yet, what happens after that? The way it looks right now, His Holiness of Asia and His Holiness of North America could both be the last elders in their lines, and I simply can’t convey how tragic that is. Along with this, Pope Francis is in agreement with climate scientists that humans are causing the sixth great extinction event. Frankly, everyone knows that our species could become endangered if not extinct, so anyone who doesn’t stand with Greta Thunberg is living in denial, at everyone’s expense.
It seems to me that our technology, spirituality, and humanity are failing us in the fight against ourselves. If there were ever a time to pick your battle, this is it. Now, don’t get wrong, I don’t know about the Second Coming of Christ or anything like that, but we are most certainly coming to the “End Times”, whatever that actually means. I’m not talking about Y2K or 2012 style predictions, for those of you who remember them. In fact, I’m not even sure what it really is that I’m trying to describe. So, often I write as an optimistic progressive futurist, but now I need to be an alarmist to really get my point across. Still, even after I thought about it for a while, I never thought I would say this but the signs of the apocalypse are becoming unmistakable to me. I’m flabbergasted by my own conclusions, but I always go where the evidence points me, eventually. Regardless, I can’t help but wonder. How can this be happening in my lifetime, or anyone else’s for that matter? I have never believed in the Rapture or anything like that. Part of what I’m saying is that we have managed to cross over too many tipping points and the natural disasters will only get worse from here on out. I’m not even sure there’s any way to fix things anymore.
The military-backed corporate-sponsored heads of state will keep protecting the pipelines and not the people, in spite of everything it means to everyone involved. Sadly, the Native American doomsday prophecy of the black snake has been fulfilled many times now, and the world might end before the century does because of the mindless consumption of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the appearance of a white buffalo calf each year, beginning in the mid-1990s, fulfills another really bad omen, indicating that Mother Earth is dying. Plus, based on some of the current projections out there, by the year 2100, the world will be at least 35 times richer than it is now. So, the spiritual problem here is that greed and ignorance are immoral sins that should be illegal crimes, but they are often seen as virtues among capitalists, rather than vices. As we can already see, vast amounts of wealth should not be hoarded by a few elites, while billions of impoverished men, women, and children suffer on a daily basis. In fact, if the world economy continues to function on systems in which the rich get richer and everyone else just gets poorer and poorer, then everyone will ultimately die at the hands of the privileged minority. By then we will have a global population of more than 11 billion people controlled by just a tiny fraction of a fraction of that.
This kind of gross disparity spells disaster if the world can’t experience a radical paradigm shift in the process. That’s why the progressive movement behind Bernie Sanders is so important, especially here in the US, but he’s a different kind of savior than that of the supposed Messiah, in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity. Of course, it means very little so long as the CIA continues to destabilize flourishing socialist nations around the world. This is how and why things like massive overpopulation and rampant resource depletion will bring about our extinction. From the Agricultural Revolution to the Industrial Revolution to whatever comes after that, another growth of a similar magnitude to the previous two could put us into something altogether different and far more devastating. Regardless, as time goes on, our global economy will eventually double in size first yearly, then monthly and then even weekly, depending on the different steps that the ruling class finally takes to get there. The way I see it, at the rate things seem to be going, if we don’t become far more charitable and compassionate, as well as conscious of our own actions as a whole, then really, really soon we will all just be totally fucked, no matter what anyone tries to do.
Without immediately implementing highly aggressive mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, first and foremost, then by the year 2100, we can expect to see upwards of about an 8 degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperatures. This will lead to apocalyptic natural disasters that will be so much more severe than the superstorms that are already happening. Think about it. People are experiencing the harmful effects of income inequality and climate change all over the planet, often with the least developed places being hit the hardest. To make matters worse, the problems are just going to keep getting worse and worse unless countries all over the world enact and enforce legislation regarding our biggest threats to existence. Sadly, we are all suffering from improper governance the world over, in one way or another. That’s why I think it’s time for a revolution to beat all revolutions. It needs to be political, technological, economical, spiritual, and of course, global, all at once. The way I see it, we need a complete reboot of our species, otherwise in less than a century humanity will be confronted by countless horrors beyond anything ever conceived of in the Book of Revelation. So, I guess, the question is, are we approaching the End Times, or are we already living through them? More importantly, what should we do about it?
