Dateline:
Lake Geneva
August 30, 2017

Opinion/Editorial

RENEWAL

The Eve of Destruction was a song written by a man named P.F. Sloan in 1964, and the musician Barry McGuire’s recording of it made it hugely popular in 1964. That was fifty-two years ago. The first stanza of lyrics is particularly poignant and eerily prescient to read:
“The eastern world, it is explodin’, violence flarin’, bullets loadin’. You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’. You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’? And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin’, but you tell me over and over and over again my friend, ah, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction.”

The world was not on the Eve of Destruction. It wasn’t even close, unless you were listening to the people talking about how the world was on the eve of destruction. The apostle John wrote words he put together on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea during the reign of Nero in Rome. Those words became what is known today as Revelations, and they were added to the bible about a hundred years after he penned them. He freely admitted that the revelations came to him in a hallucinated state, which might explain why those revelations basically negate or deny the 26 books of the New Testament that precede them. Without the Book of Revelations, Christians would not have 666 as a magic number, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or more fearful stuff to keep everyone up nights, as if contemplation of other sins was not enough.

The planet is always on the eve of destruction is what you should take away from the words of both Apostle John and Barry McGuire. The song made Barry extremely famous, and the writing of revelations did the same for John. It can be very attractive for what today we call ‘branding’ to write or sing, or even discuss the possibility that everything is about to be over, and it’s all going to end in extreme violence and pain.

You can go on YouTube right this minute and search  Nibiru. Nibiru is a made-up planet, or dwarf star, headed directly toward earth and it will supposedly strike any day now, ending all life in a fiery explosion, or worse. That it’s been coming for nigh on forty years, coming in the year ahead every time, does not matter. The date and year of its expected arrival is merely adjusted to regain lost attention or draw it in from people who’ve not paid attention to the last claims of such ‘end of it all’ junk.

In truth, most of us are not getting out of life that easy. Nope. The endurance required to live on such a dangerous, painful and unforgiving planet is manifold, and human bodies and minds have evolved to become very well equipped with the one element required. That element would be suffering, especially from our own point of reference. Just ask an old person about health. You will be standing or sitting in front of that person for a long time, listening to a litany of pain and suffering; ditto for a poor person about being broke; a homeless person about being without a place to stay. Earth is not only a dangerous place for humans to survive, it is also highly and relatively competitive. The idea for most humans is not to survive against the elements. It’s to survive against and be better than our fellow humans. It resembles that bear joke in which there are two humans about to be pursued by a killing bear. The one human sits down to put on tennis shoes. “Why are you wasting time doing that at a time like this?” the other person asks. “To run away,” the shoe fastener replies, finishing up. “You can’t outrun a bear on foot,” the first person observes, factually. “You don’t have shoes so all I have to do is outrun you,” the one with shoes replies, before taking off through the woods.

The people who are constantly drumming up and down the airwaves, the Internet, the streets and in churches are all doing the same thing. They are getting their shoes on; or already have them on. They only have to outrun you. Amazingly, most of them would also like you to contribute money or your stuff to them since you won’t be needing it. Curiously, the person asked to do this seldom wonders about why the informed person asking would want the money or stuff if they were not going to survive either.

The earth is about renewal. It goes on. It’s done so for billions of years. Extinction events are so uncommon that you would have to live more lives than there are chances at winning the Powerball lottery to get close. You are not going to win the lottery, and you are not going to die in an extinction event. Life is harder and more boring than that. Get into renewal, and don’t spend your time playing into either Barry McGuire’s, or John’s, self-serving scams, or those of the preacher at church or on You Tube.

Make the planet better while you are here. Compete because you have to, and its good for the advancement of what we call civilization. Compete fairly so when Nibiru does not come to blast you away, you are ready with a smile, knowing you played well and fulfilled your part for all humanity.

That truly, is all there is.