Apocalypse / end of the world etc.

Mr. Ed

Mr. Ed

Life does not deserve my gratitude.
Location
Central NY
Would you or do you worry about the end of the world/end times? Worrying about what may or may not happen seems like a waste of time and energy. We enter into life / Life enters unto us-we are life through living-our bodies become vulnerable to death and decay. After that I don’t know. My worldview supports a heavenly residence, unclear on the specifics, supposedly better but unclear of the details.

Should people worry about the end times? Why / Why not? Should people worry about death? Why / Why not?
 

I doubt that the world will end but the day may come when human beings no longer have a place in it.
worldwithouthumans1.jpg
 
Is it possible that whatever a person is accustomed in life will continue after physical death? In other words various afterlife destinations according to individual beliefs will present themselves as heaven, Nirvana or other manifestations created by one’s belief?
 

raybar said:
There have been numerous "end of the world" predictions over the centuries, and they all have one thing in common: They were all wrong.

Here's a list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

Available evidence indicates that the earth will end 4 or 5 billion years from now when the sun swells up into a red giant.
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I actually have one of those- one of the leaflets individuals downtown go around passing out.. it says the world will end in 2012.. might be an interesting collectors' item for future generations, ya think? :ROFLMAO:
 
I don't worry about an extinction level event ...what's the point?

I do, however, worry about our grid going down. It's very fragile and there are multiple threats including cyber attacks, EMP (all it would take is a small nuke detonated above the atmosphere), solar flare. Just think about loss of power and how quickly that would go into chaos. No heat, no water, no power to stores which only have appx three days worth of food on hand anyhow, law enforcement stretched beyond the capacity to keep any semblance of order. In a national grid down situation, I don't think even marshal law and National Guard deployment could keep a lid on things. Think we've seen proof of that this summer. The worse part of a devastating hit to the grid is that it would take years to get it back going due to no spares for the massive transformers that take a couple of years to manufacture.
 
Annie, while I generally agree with your post, doesn't that point to our loss of basic life skills and an over dependence on technology?

The world will end some day, but I fear that we (or some mad tyrant) will be the cause of our demise. As for what happens then, I believe that when you're dead, you're dead. No heaven, no hell, no anything.
 
Capt Lightning said:
Annie, while I generally agree with your post, doesn't that point to our loss of basic life skills and an over dependence on technology?
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It does, but it's understandable. We have the technology that lets us do without knowing and practicing basic life skills so understandably, we learn and practice skills appropriate to the age we live in. Skills geared to that tech and the lifestyle patterns it promotes

What most people don't realize is how fragile our technological society is. When power fails, so do water facilities. Three days without water and a body physically deteriorates and death occurs within a week. How many people have the means and knowledge to make dirty water potable? Not too many and the means to do so is affordable thanks to tech.
 
Sunny said:
"Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, It seems to me most strange that men should fear, Seeing that death, a necessary end, Will come when it will come."

Shakespeare, Julius Ceasar
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Thanks for attributing that quote. I have long wondered who originally said it. It seems to me that we must live in a very weak and fearful society. Words such as agoraphobia, hydrophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and on and on are tossed around these days without a second thought. People are seeing counselors to come to grips with their fears. Are we REALLY that weak and fearful of anything and everything? Where is the strength of character to stand up on our own two feet face the world and take things as they come?

This idea of being able to guess the "end times" seems incredibly silly to me. I remember back around 1978 when the movie "The Terminal Generation" about the end times coming "real soon now" was all the rage. I worked in a room with 3 other techs at the time, and there was an older woman who did specific types of soldering. She brought in a postcard a friend of her mother had written back in the 1920s, detailing why that was the end times. Her point was well taken - we simply can't know, and guessing does nothing more than keep people needlessly worried over nothing. If t is going to happen, it will happen on its own time, just like a storm or other inclement weather does.

Tony
 
tbeltrans said:
Thanks for attributing that quote. I have long wondered who originally said it. It seems to me that we must live in a very weak and fearful society. Words such as agoraphobia, hydrophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and on and on are tossed around these days without a second thought. People are seeing counselors to come to grips with their fears. Are we REALLY that weak and fearful of anything and everything? Where is the strength of character to stand up on our own two feet face the world and take things as they come?

This idea of being able to guess the "end times" seems incredibly silly to me. I remember back around 1978 when the movie "The Terminal Generation" about the end times coming "real soon now" was all the rage. I worked in a room with 3 other techs at the time, and there was an older woman who did specific types of soldering. She brought in a postcard a friend of her mother had written back in the 1920s, detailing why that was the end times. Her point was well taken - we simply can't know, and guessing does nothing more than keep people needlessly worried over nothing. If t is going to happen, it will happen on its own time, just like a storm or other inclement weather does.

Tony
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I don’t have an answer, what prompts fear in people> Misunderstanding and ignorance?
 
I
Mr. Ed said:
Should people worry about the end times? Why / Why not? Should people worry about death? Why / Why not?
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As most of the posts here, worrying don't cut it

Predictions?
As pointed out, those have been happening for a very long time
aaaaaand., they're just predictions

I have studied my bible
The prophecies in Daniel and in the Revelation have been spot on
So, I tend to believe what's in that book
I'm comfy with it

Oh, and in Matthew;

'But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.'

I'm thinking that too is spot on

AnnieA said:
I do, however, worry about our grid going down.
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Yeah, that's a concern
Think folks freak out over a few shortages?
That grid goes down, everything shuts off
Me, living off grid in the sticks, I might get by for a month or two

But worrying?
Some great posts here have already answered that one


One more thought;

Aunt Bea said:
I doubt that the world will end but the day may come when human beings no longer have a place in it.
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worldwithouthumans1.jpg

NOT THE PIZZERIA!!!!!

winter.jpg
 
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tbeltrans said:
Thanks for attributing that quote. I have long wondered who originally said it. It seems to me that we must live in a very weak and fearful society. Words such as agoraphobia, hydrophobia, homophobia, Islamophobia, and on and on are tossed around these days without a second thought. People are seeing counselors to come to grips with their fears. Are we REALLY that weak and fearful of anything and everything? Where is the strength of character to stand up on our own two feet face the world and take things as they come?

This idea of being able to guess the "end times" seems incredibly silly to me. I remember back around 1978 when the movie "The Terminal Generation" about the end times coming "real soon now" was all the rage. I worked in a room with 3 other techs at the time, and there was an older woman who did specific types of soldering. She brought in a postcard a friend of her mother had written back in the 1920s, detailing why that was the end times. Her point was well taken - we simply can't know, and guessing does nothing more than keep people needlessly worried over nothing. If t is going to happen, it will happen on its own time, just like a storm or other inclement weather does.

Tony
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I don’t have an answer, what prompts fear in people> Misunderstanding and ignorance.
Judycat said:
We all die and when you die the world ends for you.
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perhaps the world ends, perhaps not? I don’t know
 
Thinking further on this thread subject, it seems to me that in retirement, we have more control over the things we choose to pay attention to. We can focus on all the negative news and spend time worrying about things we have little or no control over.

Conversely, we can focus on the things we have always wanted to do, but never had time for. We no longer have to worry about having and keeping a job. Instead we are faced with what to do with ourselves over the course of a day. Isn't that something we dreamed about when we were working full time, waiting for that day when we had more control over our time?

Well, we are here (assuming we here in these forums are retired), and the time we have been waiting for is now. Are we going to now waste that period of our lives that we have worked so long for worrying about things that may never happen, or are we going to do the things that we had long dreamed about?

The focus in media and typical discussions regarding preparing for retirement seems to be all about money and having enough. The assumption seems to be that either you retire a millionaire or you are going to be eating dog food and living in a cheap hotel downtown. As usual, the reality is somewhere in between. I suspect that most of us have a fixed income consisting of Social Security (or whatever the equivalent is outside the US) and hopefully some sort of retirement savings to augment that.

For my wife and I, planning for retirement was at least as much about what we wanted to do, which in turn dictates how much money you need. We gathered the things we needed over the course of our working lives for our hobbies in retirement, and are therefore able to do what we want while living quite moderately. To me, what we want to do comes first, and then we consider how much we needed to save. Much retirement planning and discussion seems to me to be backwards in that regard.

So, all that said, it seems to me that the pursuit of our hobbies, doing the things we always wanted to do but never had time for, is a better way to live than to be worried about when the world is going to end and carrying all those silly phobias around to weigh us down.

Sometimes, in the face of these kinds of discussion as in this thread, it is a good idea to take a step back and refocus - remember what we dreamed of doing in retirement and then focusing on that, rather than all the bad things that might (but rarely do) happen to us.

I sincerely hope that we will collectively do that instead of focusing on the negative. There are good things in this world and in our lives and, if we refuse to see that, life can indeed be very miserable. However, it doesn't have to be. It is our choice and only we individually can make that choice. Yes, we all will die someday. Until then, why not choose to live?

Tony
 
My greatest fear is to know when I am dying. Also I don't want to suffer any pain or even discomfort. As for ELE my two greatest psychologically crippling events would be a nuclear exchange with a hostile adversary or an alien invasion by life forms with malevolent intent.


 
If the missiles fly ground zero would be relatively painless.

The living would envy the dead. Tina Turner Bach: Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
 
Truthfully, I look forward to death. Not morbidly, but in anticipation of the next great adventure. I believe we go on after our physical bodies are no longer useful to us. Fear of death is being inadequately prepared to die. I live so I may die to the fullness of my ability.
 

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