World-enders

The various romps through many species of "prophecy" during the previous couple of decades have been very convincing: People do not embrace "end of the world" or similar views because they make any sense. Instead, they become true believers only when they have given up all hope, for the world, or for their own lives. They are both despairing and desperate.

This kind of worldview appeals to those who want to see a quick "end to all problems," rather than the patient, laborious working-out, or solving, of those real human social and personal difficulties. It is just the 'inner child" screaming for a "quick fix," and then throwing a temper-tantrum when one does not appear!

Literally hundreds of cults and selfstyled "prophets" have, through the millennia, predicted the "end of time," "end of civilization," "end of the world," or something else equally dramatic and exciting! With the inevitable passage of time, they have all proved, and been absolutely proved to be, wrong! Still, even after the predicted "end-time" came and went, with nothing happening, true believers remained in the same cult! People don't follow cult-leaders because they make any sense, or even because they are "right." They follow for other, more childish, needs!

Cults and so-called "prophets" have, nevertheless, still learned a valuable lesson from history. That lesson is this: If you are going to be nutty, and hopeless, enough to predict the "end," make sure that you do not predict it for next week, or next year! This would simply not give your ideas enough time to spread into the heartminds of the gullible! No, make absolutely sure that your "prophecies" concern a time distant in the future. Say that the "end" is going to happen, without doubt, but that it will happen "in a few years." Never predict it for next Tuesday!

People do not enjoy being proved wrong. They like even less being laughed at! Secretly, they want to change the minds of people, and thus, feel that they have great power! This takes time, even as it takes time to fool people. The most gullible will believe that the "end" is coming in twenty-twelve or some other year! Millions believed with all their hearts that the "end" was coming in the year twenty hundred! We all remember the very dire predictions! Many buy into that old, rehashed, recycled idea! There are extremists teaching that the "end" is coming in twenty-fourteen or twenty-eighteen! But they lack true influence, and are usually dismissed, correctly, as fringe-people.