31

THE END OF THE WORLD: I have heard talk that the end of the world will occur at a certain predictable date in the near future, in fact either at the turn-of-the-century or, according to the stronger views of the more pessimistic prophets of eschatological clairvoyance and apocalyptic severity, within the next few months (though one might suppose the world to be already finished and living past itself and in spite of itself, so to speak, if one were to take the warnings or predictions of these obsessed prophets of annihilation at face-value!).

However, considering that so many discouraging predictions of this type have already outlived themselves and become thoroughly obsolete, while the world has continued to exist, to change, and even to progress, it appears only logical to conclude further developments of this ominous mania equally doomed to irrelevance, ridicule, and oblivion. Indeed, one might even hazard a fairly optimistic if not altogether comforting guess that not even a nuclear war would actually destroy the entire planet, would in fact cause it to disintegrate. But if the world could survive such a battering, then what-on-earth can all this 'end-of-the-world' speculation be about?

Leaving religious considerations to one side, I would imagine the end of the material world, as indeed the end of the solar system of which this planet is but a tiny component, to have intimate connections with the inevitable dissolution of the sun, an eventuality apparently not liable to occur for another eight-thousand million years but, nevertheless, one which, if man is to survive drastic changes of temperature in the meantime and break away from this solar system in order to establish a better life for himself elsewhere, would seem to contribute towards justifying the evolutionary thrusts behind the various space-research programmes, and thereby put a stopper into the fatuous mouths of those who foolishly imagine that a myopic attention to the affairs of the world is all that really matters.