People have been predicting the end of the world since the world began, and they always seem to think that it will end within their lifetimes. I think there is a big psychological component to this.
If the world ends during your life time, then the bad consequences of your poor life choices don't echo on for generations. If the world ends during your life time, then you don't have to come to terms with the fact that the world will bury you, forget you, and go on without you. If the world ends during your lifetime, you get to enjoy a collective end that everyone shares rather than preparing to face the lonely death that everyone ultimately has. If you think the world will end during your lifetime, you relieve yourself of the burden of trying to make a difference. How convenient. Dooming is a bizarre form of self-help of the most toxic variety.
I think that the boomer generation, having lived through the constant surface threat of nuclear war, carry with them and have passed down an unshakeable notion that the world will soon end.
Here's the thing though. There is absolutely no advantage to thinking that the world will end. It doesn't make you live better. It makes you live worse. It's high time preference. And if the world were to end, it doesn't make you any more prepared.
Furthermore, imagine that humanity goes on for another 10,000 years. How ridiculous, how perverse, how evil is it to live today under the belief that it may soon end? Let's be honest with ourselves. As civilization has persevered thus far, it will likely continue to do so with surprising tenacity. Likewise, the statistics would tell us that you, me, we will die typical, normal, mundane and forgettable deaths at the hands of time, and everything will go on without us as it always does.
Dooming about the end of the world is absurd, self-centered, unrealistic, and harmful in all the same ways that fiat money is harmful. It is insidious and perennial. It changes behavior in undetectable ways that infects entire bloodlines. It is something that I think we need to defeat.
The truth is that YOUR world will end. It could be sudden, soon, or in the late twilight of old age. But the world may go on for longer than any of us thought possible. And if we really accept that, we might change the way we live for the better. And that could actually change the future significantly.
I think it's our duty to imagine and build for that future of untold generations who carry on when many thought it impossible. I challenge you to imagine the Earth 10,000 years into the future. I challenge you to think about this as an antidote when the temptation arises to doom.
I want to live in a world where hope for what is ahead burns brightly in every heart.
I don't know the future, but I do know that I can't create it unless I imagine it and want it before it arrives, and especially, before I leave.
Here's to 10,000 more years.