House of Eratosthenes

See, there are two reasons why people might care that you were here once: You got up off your ass and did something, or you were here when it all come to a screeching halt.

Getting up off your ass is hard.

Therefore, we have this perpetual fantasy, going on and on since 1000 AD give or take, that the world is ending. It’s just people who wish to be significant, people who want to matter, but don’t want to be bothered with getting up off their asses.

I don’t know if James Taranto reads my blog. I have always taken it as a given that hardly anybody does. But how else do you explain this gem from Best of the Web yesterday?

Doomsday superstitions seem to fulfill a basic psychological need. On the surface, the thought that God or global warming will destroy the world within our lifetimes is horrifying. But all of us are doomed; within a matter of decades, every person alive will experience the end of his own world. A belief in the hereafter makes the thought of death less terrifying. But so does a disbelief in the here, after. If the world is to end with us–if there is no life for anyone after our death–we are not so insignificant after all.

I’ve been robbed, but I’m not calling the police. I’m quite flattered.

However — it should be pointed out these ruminations on the feeling of comfort, or placation, to be found from embracing the latest world-is-ending merry-go-round…whether borrowed from these unread pages or not…represent just an afterthought after Taranto has made a larger point, which we did not make here:

Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that “[Harold] Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.” Ha ha, you can’t believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.’s false prediction that there would be 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

This is an interesting question. At first, it seems the answer is obvious: The U.N. was snookered by peer pressure. I remember all the bullying like it was yesterday, all the “thousands of scientists agree with this and who in the world are you to say otherwise?” Caving in to peer pressure might be a sign of weak intellect, but it certainly isn’t a sign of insanity. If it were, that would mean eighty percent of the people with whom we attended high school, and perhaps more, were nuts. So that’s out. That’s the allure of peer pressure isn’t it? If everyone agrees with you, it doesn’t matter if what you did makes any sense, or not. You must not be nuts. Camping, on the other hand, might very well be clinically insane.

But here we come to another interesting point, a fortunate point into which we have blundered, and we owe this to Taranto. The results are pretty much the same. Coming to the wrong conclusion because you were taken for a ride on the bandwagon; coming to the wrong conclusion because you’re a nutbar. The results are exactly the same. Now, why are we concerned about people being insane, again? Why do we bother to make this differentiation? If it has something to do with the decisions being made, then why do we act like it is of absolutely no consequence, when obviously phony things become ostensibly real — just because lots of people have bought into them?

Come to think of it, are there any stories out there of Harold Camping reacting with sneering condescension to any skeptics out there against his flawed Judgment Day prediction of 5/21/11? Any stories about him working “behind the scenes” to get such skeptics shut down, or rather, shut up? I have yet to read any such thing about him. The global-warming hysterics, on the other hand…

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Imitation is the Sincerest Form XXXIVTuesday, May 24th, 2011

Imitation is the Sincerest Form XXXIV
Tuesday, May 24th, 2011