The Sky Is Falling On Our Heads!

From Nostrodamus to Chicken Little, from nuclear holocaust to global warming, I can’t remember a time in my life when the world wasn’t obsessed both in fiction and reality, with eschatology - the end of the world.

Well, me too. When I was young I had a bet with my pal Eoin that the world would end in 1981, just like Nostrodamus said. I guess I figured that if the world did end then winning that bet would be some small comfort.

The thing is…back then I really believed it might.

When the world didn’t end in 1981 I started to get mighty sceptical. I noticed that all around were doom-mongers. But where was the doom?

Meanwhile, human history took some interesting turns that were quite contrary to anything anyone had predicted.

Things We Worried About When I Was A Kid

• Overpopulation - we were all going to be starving by the year 2000
• Nuclear war - the Soviet Empire was going to go to war with the NATO allied countries and annihalate the world
• Oil running out - countries in the Middle East was going to hold the entire world to ransom over the dwindling supplies of oil. We’d be out of oil within 20 years.
• You were never safe from being bombed by the terrorists of the Irish Republican Army (or Baader-Meinhof gang in West Germany, Hizbollah in the Lebanon, etc)
• Unemployment

Things We Never Worried About When I Was A Kid

• Underpopulation - the population aging so much that there won’t be enough young people working to support the elderly
• AIDS
• Global warming
• Fundamentalist religious terrorists

We worried about a whole load of things that haven’t come to pass. We forgot to worry about a whole load of things that have.

One way or another, I was convinced as a teenager that come the year 2000 the world would have been transformed into some miserable post-apocalyptic scene like you see in movies such as ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ and ‘I Am Legend’.

I never expected the Internet, mobile phones, pocket video cameras, ubiquitous comfy coffee shops, EuroDisney, multichannel TV with personal video recording (TiVO or SkyPlus etc). Okay, not everyone in the world is lucky enough to have access to these comforts. But I expected to be scrabbling in the deserted streets of some rundown metropolitan centre, with my hair cut ragged and short so that I looked like a guy…what we have is a big improvement on what I feared would come to pass.

History isn’t a big sweeping force that can’t be altered. Key, unpredictable events - often started by one person or a small group of people - are what change human history. If you read Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi series, ‘Foundation’, you’ll see a terrific story around this premise.

But…it’s interesting, still. Where do these doomsday ideas come from? Why are we so fascinated by them? That’s why I chose this as a theme for Joshua Files. It obsessed me as a teenager.

When my father solemnly informed me that the ancient Maya had predicted our demise in 2012 I was gripped…a lifelong fascination was born. If I’d lived in a country where you could study Mayan archaeology, and hated the outdoorsy life a lot less, who knows, maybe I’d have studied the Maya myself.

Don’t worry, be happy

Nowadays I don’t spend too much time worrying about these types of things.

What’s the point?

Chances are you’ve picked the wrong thing to be gloomy about. Meanwhile life might pass you by. And whether or not you believe in an afterlife - this is probably your only chance to experience life on Earth.

You should enjoy it while you can!