I grew up in pretty boring times.\u00a0 If you’re reading this and you’re under the age of 86, so did you, really.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And let’s be clear; when it comes to the march of human history, boring is good.\u00a0 “May you live in interesting times” is often attributed as an ancient Chinese curse; it appears to be as “Chinese” as Leann Chin<\/a>, but the sentiment is dead-on.\u00a0 For most of human history (and the entire time before it), life was fascinating, brutish and short.<\/p>\n In contrast to most of human history, with its wars and plagues and cataclysms, human history as known to people alive today has been blessedly, wonderfully boring.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some react to the boredom by turning the idea of the collapse of civilization into entertainment, from campy “zombie” fiction (The Walking Dead<\/em>) to breathlessly pompous asteroid fantasies (Armageddon<\/em>) to moralistic sermons about being our own undoing (The Day After Tomorrow<\/em>) to conjuring genocidal invaders from the world of fiction (from the sublime Battlestar Galactica\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>(the 2004 version, not the loathsome seventies one) to the ridiculous Independence Day<\/em>).\u00a0I find “end of the world” p0rn unseemly; I didn’t spend this much time and energy raising kids to laugh about the whole world collapsing.\u00a0 (And may I add “stop being an idiot”).<\/p>\n Others react by hedging their bets against what, throughout human history, seems to be an inevitable. sooner or later; stocking up on food, land, ammo and other supplies to ride out a bad spell the best they can.\u00a0<\/p>\n What goes up must come down.\u00a0 Things tend to move from a state of order to disorder.\u00a0<\/p>\n S**t Happens.<\/p>\n And it’s happening all around us.\u00a0<\/p>\n And not only is it inevitable – sometimes it can be a very good thing.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n