The End of the World

I laughed (along with lots of people) at Harold Camping's apocalyptic prediction this week. On Sunday afternoon I told my family I would be leaving them soon, and at 6:00 that night--when the rapture was supposed to start--I said, "I feel like I'm floating." The jokes about these supposed ends of the world are themselves endless.

But then on Tuesday The New York Times ran two articles together: one on Camping's revised prediction that both the rapture and the world's end will arrive now on October 21, and one on the aftermath of the Joplin tornado--the search for the living and the dead. In reading the articles I realized that the monster tornado hit Joplin around the same time that Camping's saved souls were supposed to be ascending to heaven. At around the same time that the rest of us would begin our hell on earth.

Which is exactly what happened in Joplin, Missouri.

We don't need firebrand preachers and Bible-waving soothsayers to remind us that the end of the world arrives every day for someone somewhere on the globe. If we forget, we're quickly reminded by storms or by illness or by death.

If the rapture ever comes, it will surely take all of us for none of us deserves the suffering we endure. It's part of being human.

Nuclear Fallout?

The NY Times ran an article yesterday, "U. S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable," about the American public's preparedness for a nuclear attack. Apparently there's plenty of educational information available now but a reluctance to disseminate it for fear of alarming us.

The article brought to mind a vivid memory from childhood: air raid drills in elementary school where we would huddle under our desks--with our hands clasped over our tucked-in heads--readying ourselves for "the unthinkable." (It turns out that these drills weren't as ridiculous as they seemed; studies show that we're best off staying inside buildings rather than heeding an impulse to flee.)

At any rate, I'm struck by how much has changed. We didn't worry back then about scaring the public; everyone knew those were scary times and we were advised to think and plan accordingly. Contrast this with today, where people often comment on how dangerous our world is, but addressing this reality is itself unthinkable.

Indeed, we learn in the Times article that the Obama administration had planned to simulate an attack involving about 10,000 emergency personnel in Las Vegas; the drill never took place, however, because "casinos and businesses protested, as did Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He told the federal authorities that it would scare away tourists."

It's like everything else in America. Business interests dictate priorities.

We used to be scared of things that mattered. Now we're scared of shadows, and, as a result, we're becoming shadows of what we once were.