By Richard C. Cook
While skeptics mockingly point out that the “end of the world” has been prophesized over and over again for centuries with nothing happening—the latest being Y2K, they say, and another likely bust coming up when the calendar hits 2012—it’s obvious that mankind faces an increasingly unsustainable future.
The world’s economic, technological, agricultural, and political systems are breaking down. While the causes are debated, it’s certain that the human assault on the natural world has wiped out vast numbers of species and polluted the land, the air, and the oceans. After the past 100 years of history, with two world wars and low-grade but vicious warfare going on almost continuously somewhere in the world since World War II ended, it seems impossible for human beings to live together in a state of harmony either among ourselves or with the planet we call home.
Are we at “the end of the age?”
In social life, the overriding characteristic of our era is the increasing division in the world between haves and have-nots, masters and slaves, controllers and controlled, rich and poor. The power of the wealthiest class of people has never been so great. The weapons of mass destruction they–and the armed forces who work for them–monopolize have the force to destroy the earth many times over.
