A Brief History of The End of The World

There is a scene near the end of Mel Gibson’s 2006 movie Apocalypto where a Mayan villager – who is also an escaped Inca prisoner – is being chased by his captors bent on killing him. He struggles, severely wounded, onto a beach and closely pursued by the others. Suddenly he stops and gazes out to the ocean. His pursuers likewise stop and gaze. What they beheld – for the first time ever – were men in longboats rapidly approaching the shore from Spanish Galleons moored in the distance. Just as the Mayans probably felt it was the end of the world when blood-thirsty Incans enslaved and killed them, so too did the Incans marvel as they succumbed to the onslaught and diseases of the Europeans. The speed of change – with new technology and alien beings – make the world instantly frightening and wondrous. To those of us born in the 20th century, the onslaught is felt as ever-increasing rate of change. Our own aliens – computers – are ones we created, yet are unable to STOP creating them. The very physicality of all this technology bombards our senses daily, and keeps us tuned to its every need through sheer force of wonder. And its not just computers. Humans as a species are multiplying and evolving at such a rapid pace we are, in just a few short years, outstripping ALL predictions about how to deal with our neighbors and ourselves. Many think we are overpopulating ourselves beyond our capacity to supply the human race. This might be a problem, but I doubt it. The same theory was pushed by Thomas Malthus in the early 1800's when he speculated the world would go dark and all humans would starve because we were - get this - running out of whale blubber to light our lamps! And then there is the idea that ACTUAL aliens will be dropping in for tea. There is even an entire subset of cosmology beyond SETI pertaining to Ancient Alien Theory that says we are all descended from alien beings from a distant planet or solar system. Regardless of what you believe, however, you are no doubt aware of the increasing rate of change, and our current limitations in dealing with it. So what’s the answer? Look inside. Find the source of thought and wonder. Realize that there is an intelligence that guides us – that which R. Buckminster Fuller called universe – that will always be with us and a part of us. It will also eventually consume us. Remember the Year 2013. That’s the year a Supercomputer will be built that EXCEEDS the computational power of the human brain. By 2049, that power will be available to almost everyone on the planet. Scary? You bet. Or awesome. You decide.