The End of the World.

There's been a lot of chatter this past week about the end of the world, the end of life as we know it, Armageddon, judgement day, whatever term or phrase you want to use for it. It all started from a prediction made by Harold Camping, a Christian radio broadcaster from Oakland CA (right up in my neck of the woods), that the world would end on May 21st at 6pm. Harold had made a similar prediction back in the 90's when he claimed the world would end in September 1994. Of course he was wrong on both occasions
.
He based his claims on so called 'careful study' of the bible, that he somehow calculated when judgement day  would occur up to the the exact day and hour . Did he fail to read the several passages in the bible which make it clear that nobody can know when the end will come? (Matthew 24:36 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."  Mark 13:32 "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."  Acts 1:7 He said to them: "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.")

Camping is not alone in his search to try to figure out when the end of the world will come; these sorts investigations and claims have been made throughout history by many people and in many religions. For example, all of the the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have deep seeded religious views that promote and amplify prophecies that the end of the world is either imminent or coming soon within a few centuries. For Christians in particular, the belief that Jesus will return to usher in the end of the world is a dominating factor in these sorts of prophecies. Christians have thought that the end of the world has been imminent essentially since the religion was founded nearly 2000 years ago. Even in the bible it shows the apostles and disciples of Jesus making claims that the end was near at hand. But it seems that all cultures and religions have some notion of the end of the world, the Mayan calender for example is used to argue that the end of the world will come in 2012 which is, of course, another claim which will be dis proven very soon.

The truth is that the world will not be ending this millennia or even the next. We as human beings can never know what will happen to the human race or what the future will hold for us, but one thing is certain though, humans will go extinct, just as surely as any other animal will go extinct. We may have descendants of humanity living on for many millions of years into the future, but humanity as we know it does have an end. What sort of end it will be is for anyone to guess. My prediction is that; unless we annihilate ourselves and life on earth with a nuclear war, humanity will go on living for several hundreds of thousands of years, after which there will be certain branches of humanity that go extinct and new forms of humanity that will be living on for perhaps several millions of years. It will likely be an ambiguous 'end' to our race of humanity that will branch off into some other race of humanity into the future, just as it has been for all other lifeforms on earth since life began.

Looking beyond the end of humanity and our ultimate extinction we can make much more precise and accurate statements as to how the earth as a whole will end in a few billion years. With the knowledge we have on the life cycle of stars and what we know about the age of the sun, scientists can give a fairly specific timeline and sequence of events that will bring about the end of the earth. The Sun is middle aged, being roughly 4.5 billion years old.



So in about 4 billion years the sun will have increased in temperature and will start to expand more rapidly to where all the oceans will be evaporated. Eventually the sun will likely engulf the earth and obliterate it around 5 billion years from now.

As far as the universe itself, it is expected to continue expanding in size to were eventually all matter will be so spread out that there will be no light or heat remaining, this is called the 'Heat Death of the Universe'.

With all of this in mind we can be assured that the world will not be ending for many many many millions of years. Weather or not we as humans will survive longer than a few hundred thousand years is unknown but it really only makes sense to think of our short term survival and prosperity as opposed to being fixated on how things will eventually end. With this larger perspective we should try to make a world that will continue to give space, life, and opportunities to the many, many, many, generations that will follow in our wake.

Attack on the Middle Class

Alot is going on in the news that is alarming to say the least. Many of the newly elected Tea Partiers have made it very clear which side of the economic divide they stand on; they stand with the rich and the big corporations.

The latest onslaught on the middle class is taking place in Wisconsin where the newly elected Governor Walker is attempting to push a bill through the state legislature that would in essence destroy the right for workers to take part in unions and collective bargaining (Walker's union fight latest in a long history). The reasons that Walker gives are weak at best. He claims that this needs to be done in order to deal with the state budget deficit of 112 million dollars. But wait a minute...just last month he pushed for a bill that was passed that gave tax cuts to the corporations in his state. The amount of those tax cuts is equivalent in size to the budget shortfall. So basically, he just gave money to the corporations while trying to take that same amount of money from middle class workers. There are now several other states in which the republicans are proposing similar measures to cut away workers rights to collectively bargain for working conditions and benefits. A great overview of this can be seen here: GOP seizes on crisis to shift power to corporations.

This is all to common for Republicans these days. They constantly want to pass measures which take from the poor and give to the rich. Like in January, when the U.S. house republicans refused to give out jobless benefits unless president Obama agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

What is going on here? Why would people support such measures and policy? I can understand why lobbyists and politicians might support this sort of thing...after all many of them are earning their living by taking the side of the powerful and and well to do, but why would regular everyday people support all of these causes to strip money and influence from the middles class and the poor and give it all to the wealthy and the powerful? The only reason I can think if is that they are ideologically and dogmatically brainwashed by the arguments and propaganda of the corporations and the wealthy. In essence, most of the people supporting the Tea Party and the Republicans on this particular issue are unknowingly supporting their own economic demise and the demise of the middle class as we know it.

So the conservative far right continue to try to take from the poor and give to the rich, much like we would expect of Robin Hood's evil twin brother. It is important to remember that in the past Republicans have stood up for the poor and the middle class. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, was a great advocate for workers rights and worked hard to bust large monopolies and established the Department of Commerce and Labor. I bring this up to make it clear that I have no ill will towards Republicans in general, but when they knowingly or unknowingly side with the powerful and the wealthy at the expense of everyone else, well then I take great issue with that.

We must do all we can to see that the Tea Partiers are not successful in their efforts to undermine the middles class and continue to prop up the powerful and the wealthy. We must fight for the rights of workers, for a sense of fairness in our economy, and for reasonable reforms to deal with the budget issues that states and the federal government are now facing.