What's wrong with the world?

What is wrong with the world? It is our insatiable appetites. Our craving to own, to conquer, to dominate. It is our desperation to assert, to compete, to flourish at the expense of the world, even at the expense of our future survival.  

Nature has seen no greater foe than mankind. It is a humanity without the humanity, dignity without the dignity and charity without the charity. We promised to make the world a better place. We assured nature we come in peace. We strove to change the world by invention and technology. But what have we left behind? We have left behind a legacy of premature extermination.  

The irony is that in our relentless drive for progress, for breakthroughs, and for longevity, we have unwittingly driven ourselves off the cliff. It is said that we have to protect our future because we will have to spend the rest of our life there. But the way things are going now, I'm afraid that the rest of our life would just have to be spent in the present. Mmm...fruit basket for thought?  

My point is this, the end is not a moment in time. It is a drawn out process. And in our blind march towards a certain progress, one that is fraught with greed and self aggrandisement, we have planted the seed of inevitability and we will therefore inherit the wind of our own destruction. Unfortunately, this time, we may even take the world down with us.

I have always ransacked religious books to look for the causes/signs of the end of the world. But I have looked amiss. In my feverish enthusiasm to understand our pending doom as foretold in the sacred books, I have overlooked the obvious. Alas, it is as obvious as the nose on my face. What is revelation to biblical end time is standard college economics to the end of the world.  

Stripped of all the jargons, isn't economics the study of two exhaustible variables: scarcity and fair allocation? But what economics has sadly omitted to mention at its footnotes, end notes or postscript is this foreboding warning: "Earth's scarcity is no match for man's ferocity."  Should there be a sequel or volume 2 to the economics text, it would not be about "microeconomics" or "macroeconomics", it would be more appropriately entitled, "mega-destructionomics".  

Alas, if the biblical end time doesn't end soon, mankind may just sign up as God's co-partner with it's own signature version of the weapon of mass destruction. I can easily think of two potential candidates here: nuclear and environment.  

So, Chesterton was right on the money when his sagely reply to the question "what's wrong with the world?" is, "It's me." If the sun, the source of all earthly life and the suckling mother of nature, could speak her mind, I would imagine her to say this to us, "It would take another 5 or more billion years to burn up the hydrogen in me and consume earth and all life on it. But it will only take you guys something shy of one hundred thousand years to perform the same feat. Indeed, I shine in awe!"  

I think I have to end now before the end time comes. And my parting shot is this quote: "I will die one day. Why then bring the rest of humanity into my grave?" (michael han). Cheerz.