This is a rather meandering article, but it makes a cogent point: the concept of the "end times" has been a driving force for many of not most social movement history, and across most cultures. It has always been a useful tool for people with ulterior motives, be they political or economical, or both. And it does not come in an exclusively religious form either; even Marx with his telosity taps into this as well as the article points out. Recently one need not look further than the furor around the expected effects of climate change to get a sense of a "secular" end-of-times mentality.

But as this last point illuminates, just because the end of times prophecies have been crying wolf for thousands of years doesn't mean we can discard it. We may yet be obliterated, be it by galopping climate change, a meteor shattering our planet, have a lethal pandemic, or have nuclear war lay most of earth inhabitable. These are realistic threats, and people have probably always been aware that our exitence is fragile. All we can (and should) do is do our best to mitigate them.

What we definately should *not* do, is to try and make these things happen, just so that we may (or may not) live forever in a blissful afterlife. Or (and this is the main problem) suspend mitigating efforts because they are inconvenient in the short perspective. Just sayin.