Speech On Apocolyptism

The sky is falling, cried Chicken Licken,
When one day she was out corn picking, and a piece of sky fell on her head,
She proclaimed they'd all be dead...

from the old fable of Chicken Licken

It is over thirty years since the Sex Pistol’s Johnny Rotten had proclaimed that, “....there’s no future.”
We lived fast, and many of us did die young, but the rest of us...well, we’re still here.
I was recently engaged in a heated discussion with a good friend of mine about the recent global financial crisis, the accelerating climate related catastrophes and the general prevalence of apocalyptic doom and gloom.
He asked me,
“Don’t you think it’s close now? You know, the whole system collapsing....an end to the known world, ......don’t you think it’s about to happen any day now?”
“Yes I do”, I replied
“.....but I have been thinking that for over thirty years, since I was about fourteen years old.”
Apocalyptic warnings are nothing new, there are literally hundreds of doomsday prophecies scattered throughout our collective histories. Apocolyptism is mainly a religious

In Isaac Asimov's ‘Book of Facts’ (1979), he claims there is an Assyrian clay tablet dated back to approximately 2800 BC, which was unearthed bearing these words, "Our earth is degenerate in these latter days. There are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end. Bribery and corruption are common." The Romans in 634 BC had their own collective doomsday prediction and foresaw the demise of their City of Rome in its 120th year of founding. The first millennial French Bishop, Hilary of Poitiers had put his money on the world ending in 365 AD. His precognitions were soon superseded by North African Christians, The Donatists, who were said to be looking forward to the world ending in 380 AD. The list of historical doomsayers is lengthy and predominantly Christian, a majority all so far proved wrong but it only takes one to get it