Could the millennia of end-proclaimers . . . be at an end?

Could the loud my-way-or-hell ranters actually become extinct?

Nah. Not for a long time. Not as long as there are blindly-rigid thinkers of questionable intellect. They will always be with us — just as the apocalypts will always be.

Take your pick for the end of the world . . . 

• Religious righteous: Armageddon
• New Age daffodils: 2012

How many end-of-the-world scenarios have come and gone already? Digital Y2K, nuclear war with the USSR, the first generation after the founding of Israel (I remember this Biblically-based prophecy well because I thought it was such a bummer as a young teen I wouldn’t get a long life; I already knew then I would need it), the plague, solar eclipses before they were understood, a thousand other times in history. 

There was a mass movement in 999 CE convinced the end was coming when the calendar turned 1,000. They were off a bit. 

How many ends are said to be coming? Environmental, asteroidal, financial, political. hemorrhoidal . . . 

No, no, no — that kind of fervent belief in how awful it is right now will always appeal to the undisciplined mind. 

But to the wide-open mind, what isn’t possible?