The Greatest Existential Risk

How to start your own doomsday cult

Exciting, isn’t it.

The ultimate adventure.

From killer asteroids to mega volcanoes, through to the zillions of religions that each have one at their core – there is just so many “end of the world” narratives to choose from. And while they are all different, one thing that they do have in common is that they all need your help. They all need you to act now before it is too late.  Save yourself, save us all. Change your ways – repent. They all need heroes to help save the world, and of course every hero needs a quest, and what better quest is there than saving the world.

Doom pandemic

According to a 2015 YouGov Survey in the UK, 23% of Britons believe the world will end in their lifetime.   

That’s a lot of doom!

Ever noticed how the stories that we like the best are the ones that seem to go out of their way to make it really bad.  No one wants to hear of a happy life without conflict, they want lost love, deceit, injustice, drama, conspiracy, hate and conflict. 

Every good author knows that you need to torture your protagonist.  If you are going to keep your audience’s attention, then you are going to have to keep it entertaining, and nothing entertains like the torturous narrative of a good dooms-day threat.  Drag them down into the overly exaggerated depths of excruciating pain. The printed word has no soul, you need to exaggerate it tenfold if it is to carry the emotional kick. Remember, the most negative narrative always wins in the race to the bottom. 

The problem with all of this exaggerated depths of pain, is that it is exciting.  Much more exciting than producing anything, getting a job, or an education, and done right, it can be very persuasive. Hell, some have been so convinced that they have even given up their life savings, so sure were they that the end was nigh, but most just talk about it, and do pretty much nothing.  It is far easier to sit back and complain then it is to actually do something, and spreading the bad news both feels and looks like you are actually doing something about it. 

A zombie and its money are soon parted

While doom is all very exciting, apparently it is also very expensive, and there is one thing that the doomsday merchants need more than your help, and that is your money.  Think of it as an insurance premium. If they are right, then it is a small price to pay to save the world, and if they are wrong then, well it doesn’t really matter – they probably did some good with your money anyway, maybe.  Besides, with everyone so excited about the end of the world, it is hardly the time to start thinking of money – what is the good of money if the world is going to end tomorrow anyway. Forget starting a new business, going for that promotion, or advancing your education – you’re not going to be here. Might as well just enjoy the short time that you have left spreading the bad news. 

And nothing spreads like bad news. 

Doom – spreads like an epidemic ruining the day of everyone that it comes into contact with it, infecting them with the excitement of imminent destruction, spreading through the population like a grey wave of depression and hopelessness.  Doom , doom, doom. Zombifying the masses one by one as it goes, each new recruit enlisted in the fight. Excited, confident, determined, angry. Angry at whatever the narrative has told them to be angry at – the Baby Boomers, the Greedy Businessmen, the Corrupt Politicians, and or the Big Polluters.  Tax, ban, and shame those that oppose our newfound virtue. Don’t fight their argument, fight their identities. Use their sex, their age, and their race against them. Forget diversity of ideas – judge them as a group and be gone with them. Kill new developments, new factories, new mines, and competing ideas. Kill them all.  Death, death to them all. The Killer Zombies march on, spreading and infecting fear, killing our economy, killing our production, killing our future.

Despondent defeatism spreads like an epidemic through the wretched minds of our youth.  

Our leaders either capitulate or are cast out as a message of prosperous opportunities can’t compete with the excitement of doom and gloom. More rational voices are unfriended and ostracized as the infected zombify in their own cesspool of doom.  

Please Stop! We have won already.

I remember the early days of the conservation movement.  I was out there saving the whales, well not me directly, but my heart was in it. I tossed greenpeace a couple of dollars whenever I could, and I was a happy camper when they passed laws to ban CFCs and to ban whaling in huge parts of the ocean.  It was a golden time. The conservation movement made a good argument, and they won. It was exciting, and I was fully behind them in their life and death fight with the mean and greedy whalers, but hey, they won. What were they to do now – write to their supporters saying, hey look guys we have won, you can stop sending us money now. Please, nothing to see here, go home.  Of course not.  What they did was they went looking for another cause, something else to ban.  They needed another bad guy to vanquish, and once they were done there, they needed to find another, and another.    

The greatest existential risk of them all

They have been so successful in fact, that now they are going after anyone that produces anything.  The oil produces, coal mines, power stations, even farmers are fair game. These are the staples of our civilisation.   And who is next when they have finished vanquishing those that produce our food, our power, our medicine, and our clothes.  Will they call it a day and go home then, or will they keep going, vanquishing and vanquishing and vanquishing. We need people to work in these industries and to produce this stuff, and the killer zombies are out there spreading their “kill, ban, demonise all that produces” ideology,  making it less than virtuous to produce any of these – in fact to produce anything at all. Is that a campfire in your cave, best that we stamp it out to save the planet, just in case.

Ironic that it is not pollution of the planet that will end us, but the pollution of our minds.  And who would have thought that with all of the end of the world cults that are out there, that those that championed the “zombie apocalypse” scenario would be right.

The end is nigh

Ironic too, that those that see themselves as the heros are the ones that are actually leading the zombie charge.  Yes, life is fragile and the end is always near, but as Franklin D. Roosevelt told us all those years ago, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”.   Winston Churchill too, in far worse times than this, had to calm the doomsayers with “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”.  

There is no point in being pessimistic as it probably wouldn’t work anyway

Things are better than they have ever been. Life expectancy is up, infant mortality rate is down, death during childbirth has almost disappeared, crime rates are at an historic low, crop yields are at an all-time high. There are so many koalas on Kangaroo Island that they have been sterilising them since 2017.  What we need most right now is not the courage to survive, but the drive to thrive.  The planet is not under threat – it is us and our minds that are at stake here.

Alternatively, if that is not exciting enough for you, then be afraid, be very afraid. The killer zombies are here, and the end is nigh.

What to read next…

How about “How to make your own WMD with smoke and mirrors” – now that you know how to start your own doomsday cult you may as well go all the way and create your own superweapon as well – after all, every supervillain needs one, but you will have to be quick.

_____________

Disclaimer:  Nothing contained within should be considered evidence of, nor construed to be indicative of the views of the author.  No intent is claimed beyond the shadows, for it is only within the shadows that both the light and the dark can follow.  One claims the earth is flat, and another claims that it is a perfect sphere. Both are wrong, but one is less wrong than the other.  Both are shades of grey, albeit very different shades, even so, let us welcome them both into the shadows, as the brightest of light would blind those that need the light the most and do little for the already enlightened. Be careful when asking people to think, many would rather die than think, and some do. Besides, I didn’t think that anyone would actually read this disclaimer.

Leave a Reply