Facing Death

WE ARE DOOMED to extinction. that much, we know. There is probably not a human alive on this planet who actually believes that billions of years from now, in the far, far future, when teh universe is aging and winding down, that humanity, or anything remotely like it, will still be busying about on planet earth. Or, for creationists, the rapture and end times will arrive soon enough. Humans, who may or may not be the only living species on Earth aware of its individual and collective mortality, has been predicting its o end, forever. As the year 999 A.D. waned, and the year 1000 approached, Europe was in an uproar about it, it being widely believed that the end of the millennium would be the end of the world. Those of a certain age will recall a similar sociological phenomenon in 1999, with our much ballyhooed Y2K crisis, which, like all the rest of the end of the world scenarios, never happened. As December 31, 1999 loomed, millions were frightened that when the clock struck midnight, and the year 2000 entered, all computers would, for some never revealed reason, cease to function, and our modern world would dissolved in chaos. People were stocking up on canned tuna and toilet paper in backyard underground bunkers. I clearly recall not being worried about it in the least. I think I would have stayed calm a thousand years ago, or in 1843 and again 1844 when the Millerites stood on hill tops, awaiting the rapture. The fact that in both instances western humanity celebrated the millennium a year too early does not inspire confidence in human predictive capabilities. Our perpetual fear of mass extinction is well founded. all things considered, it is a miracle that we haven't already been wiped out. Nuclear warfare and climate change are at the top of the current list of dire threats. An uncontrollable viral epidemic is always possible, and, in the long run, inevitable. Huge meteors and asteroids hurtle through space constantly, and often pass alarmingly close to earth. S big enough collision would wipe us, and all other life, off the planet. To assume that life will continue on earth until the sun goes nova in a few billion years seems unrealistic. Our best, indeed only option is to reduce as much as possible opportunities for destroying ourselves, by keeping our environment clean and eliminating weapons and conflicts from culture and future history. The universe will find some way to get rid of us soon enough.