Thursday, May 22, 2008

Apocalypse Again

Hot on the heels of "Apocalypse Now" comes "Apocalypse Again". You can never have enough apocalyptic posts in my experience. This time the social anthropologist Dr Benny Peiser from Liverpool John Moores University weighs in.

One revelation of this article is finding out that there is a magazine called "The End is Nigh".

The magazine by-line is "The End is now - official magazine of the apocalypse: Predicting the end since 2005".

If that were not "ironic" enough when one clicks on the link however one gets the following message:

"The End Is Nigh is undergoing a re-fit but will be back in February... watch this space!"


Is this deliberate irony? The idea of the "end is nigh" magazine telling us to come back later is pure genius.

I digress, the Benny Peiser post is a transcript of an interview he gave to the "End is Nigh".

I have picked out a few of the questions. Click to read the answers.

The New Age of Apocalypticism [Die Achse des Guten]

John Reppion: What do you think it is that drives us as human beings to constantly prophesise and predict the end of the world?

John Reppion: Do you think then, that when things are on the up and up, people are inclined to think positively but once economic growth reaches a plateau then people have more of a tendency to start focusing on the bad things?

John Reppion: What effect do you think the millennium had in terms of focusing people’s minds on a specific date for a potential disaster?

John Reppion: That brings me on quite nicely to the issue of climate change. You’re known as somebody who doesn’t necessarily buy into the popular ideas of man made climate change in terms of the way things are being portrayed in the tabloids and on television. What do you make of this government’s ideas about a carbon budget?

John Reppion: There is the argument that the idea of CO2 emissions contribution to global warming is being used politically to keep the developing countries such as India and China down.

John Reppion: Moving on from global warming then, you have said in the past that “it is understandable that we try to put a positive spin on the ultimate threat Near Earth Objects pose to human survival” are we deluding ourselves about our ability to defend ourselves from NEOs?

John Reppion: What do you think is actually the greatest threat to the survival of humanity at this time?




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