I got off the phone with my mother and everything about the world today scares her.

The up coming election is just a sign of the times, just like every election before that. How bad the public schools are is another sign of the times. The end of the world is always around the corner. But when that crisis they are sweating over passes they have to manufacture another one. The end is near, always.

Change is already scary for many people.
Couple that with having been indoctrinated to believe that the world MUST get "awful" for magic jeezus to come back, and you get...
Your mom. And lots of others like her.

They long for the "Good Old Days" when they didn't understand the world they inhabited and they had no responsibilities and things were simpler for *them*

Exactly. In the "good ol days" we didn't have 24-hr. cable news, and internet. People had their opinions about elections but it wasn't the end of the world. The Civil Rights Movement, let alone the times before the movement when Black people had to live in this country on Jim Crow terms, were fraught with violence. Police brutality was rampant. Racism was rampant. Wars were way worse than what we're seeing today. But it wasn't in their faces and no one was constantly telling them it meant the end was near.

The Black president really set the end days in motion for them. And all they can do is hope that it will all be over before the predicted time, coming very soon, when whites will be less than half the population of this country. I'm convinced all the problems we're seeing right now area purely xenophopic driven. Surely the Lardgawd will not let people whose skin color was closer to Jesus's take over the land saved for His chosen people.

Sing it, sister!

In mormondumb, every bad thing that happens in the world is apocalyptic. Growing up in the 70's and 80's, long hair, Michael Jackson, ERA, Carter's fuel crisis, weed, heavy metal, etc. were all signs of the times and the impending doom that would no doubt hit us at the turn of the century. When all of that failed, the Q15 have to turn to other sure-fire Jesus-is-coming issues such as porn and gay marriage (the later not so much anymore).

It's a survival mechanism. If the end of the world weren't just around the corner, Mormons would die of boredom.

Everything is the end of the world, except it's not, because people think it's the end of the world, but in fact people aren't very important (other than to themselves) in the grand scheme of things.

Life flows on within you and without you, as George Harrison wrote in "Within You Without You."

Always has been.

Studying history I've discovered that the one constant is "THIS IS THE END, ELIZABETH!"

Generation after generation after generation.

If there ever was a decade that I would have bought into "the end" it would have been the 1960's. What a god awful decade. Leaders getting their heads blown off right and left. Race riots, bay of pigs, damn dirty hippies.....then it took a whole entire decade to heal. The 70's weren't any better.

One of the major signs of a cult is the teachings and beliefs that these are the last days. Even some of the ancient apostles in the new testament claimed that "these are the last days", and that was over two thousand years ago. Whether you're with Jim Jones, or with the Jehova's Witnesses, or with the Mormons, that is always an underlying theme. When you hear this theme, you know you're being played by a cult.

Thanks, you just confirmed to me the Climate change people(Al Gore and ilk) are a cult as well. They just call their cult "science".

If only we could get back to that perfect world(eden) before humans got so populated.

Humans free of religion even fall into this line of thinking. Everything was better before humans, end of the world is coming, just around the corner.

And when scientists make mistakes or proffer theories without supporting evidence, they are disproven.

http://www.wired.com/2014/09/fantastically-wrong-n-rays/

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2006/01/10/science/10clone.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

As for the end of the world -- fear is a powerful motivator. Hitler and his Nazi Party used fear to persuade people to vote for them. Evangelicals and Mormons use fear as a means of control.

Without fear, the system collapses.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RWIS7olVbGE



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2016 06:51AM by anybody.

<shrug> Hardwired human psychology. The world's always going to hell in a handbasket. The kids nowadays are always soft and spoiled. Society is always on the wrong track. The <fill in the out group> are always destroying goodness and purity.

So it has been through all recorded history, and there's no reason to think the exact same sentiments weren't fully in force long before it could be recorded.

the thinking has been done

A year or so ago I was working in my front yard when two I was spotted by two JWs who were working the neighborhood. I had no escape route so I decided to be polite but to also stand my ground with them.
They began their sales pitch by listing a few recent world events and asking if I didn't think this meant that the end of the world was upon us. I told them that I was actually quite optimistic about the future. A decent study of history tells you that there have always been people warning of the apocalypse, yet it has never happened. A central European in 1348 had every reason to believe the end was near as people all around them died from the plague. Yet, it wasn't the end.
The JWs had no response to this. They had not prepared any counter arguments. They simply thanked me for my time and moved on. I accidentally discovered an easy way to deal with them.
Organized religion thrives on fear. If you aren't afraid, they have nothing to hold over your head.

According to Paul Erlich (of Stanford, no less!), we should be packed in the streets fighting for small bags of Soyent Green. And according to AL-gore, I should be fishing for stripers off my back porch. Y2K, of course, destroyed the internet. And didn't we exhaust the world oil reserves in the 1980s?

Nowadays, people both left and right, religious and not so, prep for TEOTWAWKI, "The End Of The World As We Know It. Could be solar flares, Sharia Law, race war, the collapse of the grid(s), global warming.

The operative factors seem to be some combination of being regarded as a prophet or expert, gaining adulation and income off of it (throw in a Pulitzer and a Nobel Peace Prize for good measure), being hailed as a savior, and the biggest plum of all: because of your special knowledge, you and your followers get to survive!

Ah yes, Y2K. I remember Art Bell hyperventilating about it every night with each and every guest for over a year leading up to 1/1/2000.

Art: ...And joining us tonight on the phone is self-proclaimed Bigfoot expert and all-around quack, Yeti Jones. Tell the audience how serious Y2K is and what you are doing to prepare for it.

http://blog.thephoenix.com/blogs/blogs/phlog/Rapture_WWNEWS_Cover_480.jpg



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2016 05:20PM by anybody.

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> According to Paul Erlich (of Stanford, no less!),
> we should be packed in the streets fighting for
> small bags of Soyent Green. And according to
> AL-gore, I should be fishing for stripers off my
> back porch. Y2K, of course, destroyed the
> internet. And didn't we exhaust the world oil
> reserves in the 1980s?

It must be interesting to live in a world where things are so absolutely black or white, where there is no "gray," and where a person can ignore anything contrary to their opinion. Me, I don't live in that world.

Erlich, for example, did indeed blow it on some things (even though he specifically said in the book that he wasn't making "predictions," and clearly said that none of his scenarios were likely to actually occur), but he nailed it on many others.

Gore never made the prediction you say he did. And his projections have turned out to be mostly right -- though he was indeed off on some of them.

The main reason both were off on some things is because their projections assumed rates of things at the time would stay the same. They didn't. Food production per acre went up in Erlich's case, while population growth rates went down (quite a bit -- in response to his warnings and those of others? I don't know). Yet he "predicted" that millions of people would starve -- and guess what? Millions of people *are* starving. Around 21,000 people die *a day* from hunger/starvation...that's over 7.6 million per year. Millions starving as he projected, how about that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich

"It must be interesting to live in a world where things are so absolutely black or white, where there is no "gray," and where a person can ignore anything contrary to their opinion. Me, I don't live in that world."

Hie, that is very off-putting. I can't discern just what's in your thoughts, but it seems to be saying, "I'm a rational, reasonable, well-adjusted person capable of nuance and sophisticated thought. If you disagree with me, you're obviously irrational, unreasonable, mal-adjusted and incapable of sophisticated thought." In all friendliness and respect, give that some thought--it comes off as elitist.

Now, regarding the matter of secular end-time scenaria. Yes, Erlich pulled his punches, prognistically speaking, just like many religious "prophets" throw in disclaimers and codicils. But overpopulation continues to be a foundation myth to the secular mindset. Left out of this is 1) increased food production and industrial efficiency and 2) The decrease in productive First-World population is over-burdened providing for their aging demographics and 3) Third-world population is growing both dangerously and disproportionately.

Interesting that "global warming" is now re-named "global climate change" and "catastrophic climate phenomena," which allows their advocates to categorize ANYthing that appears to be irregular or abnormal as human-caused. Let's bear in mind that the entire, um, concern was based on algorithms derived on questionable (possibly fraudulent) data. The hacked emails of the IPCC showed that they were adjusting their recorded temperatures upward to match their projections. Polar ice continues to grow, polar bears are thriving, hurricanes are diminishing in both frequency and ferocity, sea levels are rising MUCH slower than anticipated, and AL-gore had to excise his infamous hockey-stick graph from his propaganda film, "Inconvenient Truth," because it was a pure fake.

From the article, linked below:

"12 October 2007 Al Gore said with apocalyptic certainty while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, 'The North Polar ice cap is falling off a cliff; It could be completely gone in summer in as little as seven years. Seven years from now!'"

No, the sky is not falling, but certain people (Goldman-Sachs, Elon Musk, Al-gore, ethanol manufacturers, and all sorts of crony capitalists) are making a lot of money scaring us and forcing us to subsidize exotic technologies with higher taxes, mandates, utility rate surcharges, tax-supported "improvements," and the like.

Added bonus: This "cause" gives lots of people "something to believe in," and satisfies their altruistic instincts. Me? I'm still waiting for the algae-, cornwaste-, garbage- and woodchip-derived non-polluting, high-efficiency fuels the government-subsidized scientists promised us ten and twenty-five years ago.

http://www.weathertrends360.com/Blog/Post/10-Predictions-vs-Reality-and-the-Winter-2014-2015-Hype-2008

It is very rational fear, as you get older you'll feel it too.

Endings are just another way of saying new beginnings.

People have been fearing the world will end in their lifetimes for millenias already. In a way it does, with the passing of each generation and life as we know it.

But life goes on with or without us. The only constant is change.

12/21/2012 the Mayan End date, I am surprised no one mentioned that yet.

some radio preacher who said the world was gonna end in May of 2012? The day came and went, nothing happened. My neighbors had a sign in their yard warning all of us.

All the bible thumpers around here are waiting for the Rapture. My old boss(Assembly of God)talked about it all the time.

People have been waiting for the end of the world since the beginning of time.

There was a guy in our ward that was trying to get a group of people together to go live in the hills on 12/21/2012. It got pretty crazy. He was asking some of the women if they would have a problem marrying him in the future. That was what killed his grand ideas. The women weren't having any part of that crazy.

Omg, you know sumptin'? If I could go back and change one thing it would be to genuinely GET TO KNOW some of those insane wack-a-dos that every ward has.

There're some stories there, I'll tell ya. Ruth Robeline ain't got nothin on some of those folk, bless their hearts.

(I'm working in the mountains of Georgia right now and every time I spend time here, the above is how I start to think)

Where in Ga mountains? Anywhere near Big Canoe?

Gatorman

Things are better than most people think. Read "The Better Angels of Our Nature," by Steven Pinker.

Its really all they have. Religion hasn't done jack for the world (for the most part) in this life, so all they can do is talk about it ending, which allows their big plan to finally come together.......as far as they know.

It's a typical religious fear tactic. Scare them into

believing as a way of controlling your own destiny.


It's bull shit.

Back in my day the end of the world was so close that wise prophets told my father to take money from the already skimpy family budget and send it to Utah for a truckload of food powders.

Anyone who talks seriously about the apocalypse sounds like someone who's too dumb for parenting. That's my take.

And I feel fine.

scaredhusband Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> The up coming election is just a sign of the
> times, just like every election before that.

Let's see. The narrative this election is the shoot-
from-the-hip Republican candidate is considered dangerous and
unacceptable by many of the stalwart party leaders who are
distancing themselves from him. The democratic candidate is
considered smart and very experienced but fundamentally corrupt.

It's 1964 all over again.

"That's great! It starts with an earthquake...."

I think the belief that the world is going to end any day now is as old as organized religion that has an end times scenario. Christianity when you think about it, is a doomsday religion, as every generation for the last 2,000 years or so believed they were the last.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2016 03:48AM by adoylelb.