When I was in college in the early 1980's, there was a strange guy always hanging out on the edge of campus, always wearing a black preacher's robe and a sign reading "The End Is Near!"
For anyone who stopped to listen, he'd offer up a never-ending stream of reasons why certain things happening in the world represented "PROOF" that these were the End Times.
Of course, he's by no means the first to have stood around with that sign. Nor will he be the last.
Is that the end of the road?
Seems like the world is on fire.
Yesterday afternoon, I resigned myself the the relatively mindless task of shoveling a huge pile of soil from our driveway into the raised beds of our garden expansion. As I stood there — not thinking about much in particular — I considered the many times the world has "been on fire" and The End has been near.
Not to make light of global or US affairs, wherever we are now is always going to be five minutes closer to "the end" than we were five minutes ago...
One of the more original signs I've seen I came across while driving through Eugene, Oregon, looking for a place to have breakfast. A fellow with a backpack had stationed himself on a busy corner with a sign that read:
He was wearing a sequined top hat and was quite adeptly juggling two walking sticks decorated with bright blue mylar streamers. His "collection box" was an old metal bedpan and judging by the contents, people stopped at the light were rewarding his originality quite generously.
For some reason, that sign has recently to mind as I have peripherally been keeping up with what is going on "out there," which has increasingly pulled me towards the thought that I simply want to resign from the human race and leave.
What lies beyond the next mountain?
There are many good and fine human beings out there, but it seems like most of us who just want to live a peaceful life, minding our own business, are being more and more overrun by by screaming troops of roaming baboons who just want to destroy things for little reason other than they can.
The fact that people have recently felt/been compelled to stay in their living spaces for three months evidently hasn't made things any better.
So now we have riots... and I understand that since Covid is losing some of its power to scare people, the Ebola virus has dusted itself off and is making a reappearance...
I have had ENOUGH!
Mixed in with the endless stream of pure junk in my email this morning, a friend sent me a meme-ish thing that was basically a sort of "list" of everything Humanity has been freaked out about since the mid 1960's.
From TVs making people go blind; to subliminal advertising in movies; to the total melting of global ice caps by 1975, 2000, 2015; to microwaves giving us cancer; to terrorists; to SARS; to oil running out by 2010; to holes in the ozone layer wiping out all life, to Covid to 5G to....
If I were representative of an alien species watching lifeforms on this planet, I'd conclude that one of the dominant species had an unhealthy and compulsive obsession with being afraid of everything.
Science fiction author Frank Herbert (of the "Dune" series) — who lived here in my town for many years — coined the phrase "Fear is the Mindkiller."
Frankly, I'm tired of a world in which most people worry there's an invisible "Boogie Man" underneath every blade of grass.
And so, I resign.
Thanks for reading, and I wish you a day free from being afraid!
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Created at 20200603 12:56 PDT
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