The end of the world seems to be the latest craze around since Justin Bieber. Okay, Okay, now seroiusly though it's getting old.
I work with this guy who's life consists in two things: watching TV and baking. He knows everything about the weather and animal planet but little else. Last week according to him (I've later confirmed by checking the paper), at a beach in Cornwall, England, a huge sperm whale was found still alive resting in the sand (she died of dehydration soon after). This was enough to start this huge debate about the 'signs' that the end of the world is coming. I couldn't stand the whinning for too long. So I exploded and bombarded everyone with some facts. First of all, my father was a fisherman and he saw whales, fish and any other kind of sea life killing itself before, due to being hurt, poisoned or intoxicated. This means that it happens ALL the time since FOREVER. Second, for those of you who use the recent Japanese natural disaster as another 'sign', there's the 1775 tsunami/earthquake of the city of Lisbon, shanxii earthquake in 1556, there's the Yeallow River flood in 1887 and the Black Plague in 1346. These are only a few but my point is to prove that natural disasters and worldwide pandemics have existed since forever and most likely will continue to exist because that's just how it goes and the world keeps on spinning.
Third, all of this climate/oil crisis going on represents danger. We should be alarmed and the Age of Stupid does a great job in illustrating this. We only have one planet and we're extremely dependent (and careless) of its limited resources. In order to eventually destroy the one planet that we have , we have to start changing our attitudes towards it. NOT PANICKING about some factless based onspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are fascinating to me... check out the PANIC ENCYCLOPEDIA for some interesting stuff along these lines. We talked at the beginning of the semester about narrative and folks being hard-wired to try to make sense of This Thing Called Life. Such conspiracy theories go in cycles--often tied to severe economic, political and/or social stress...
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