OK, it is me, or has Andrew Sullivan's Daily Beast blog become more of a religious stir pot than before his friend, and vocal atheist, Christopher Hitchens passed away? Today's point, his posting on the psychology of armageddon. http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/04/the-psychology-of-armageddon-1.html
He posts that many believe the end times have arrived, this in support of his statement that apolacyptic fantasy is an excuse for inaction. Why bother recycling if the world is burning up?
Let's balance this for a minute. Apocalyptic fantasy is nothing but fantasy. It sells popcorn in movie theaters and it brings the inner D&D player out of otherwise normal people and invites them to an exciting game of what-if, all while munching their popcorn and enjoying the show. Strong fantasy sucks us in. But how any responsible social organization, such as church, let alone a religion, can preach, let alone support, the concept of an end times fantasy is unthinkable in this day and age. We should be well matured and beyond it by now.
We all carry a bit of fantasy inside of us. It's true. That people cannot separate fantasy from the reality we live in speaks to some mechanism deep within all of us. And therefore I would caution that we choose our fantasies wisely. We must not live outside our means. We must live with what we have. We must nurture what we have left. If we do not then we are only leaving an unthinkably poisoned ruins for those who follow in our footsteps. And they will only look back and wonder why we acted in fantasy, or worse, used fantasy to support our inaction, when there are so many wiser actions that could have been taken.
