Editor’s Note: This letter is in reference to the column “Mothy mayhem means the end is nigh,” by Devon Stevens, published in the Daily Lobo Wednesday.
Editor,
The column “Mothy mayhem means the end is nigh” rightfully pokes fun at what is a most unfunny buildup of belief that the world really will come to an end this year. One such true believer I know used to be a levelheaded staffer at a drop-in center for the mentally ill. Then he had a stroke and now every day he posts a little note outside his door announcing the number of days left until Dec. 22. Yes, they have it right down to the date. I assured him that a solar flare — his version of events — could not possibly reach out and actually engulf and destroy Earth. But his countdown goes on. Wrapped in envelopes of superstition, the doomsday survivalists are holed up among us like ticking time bombs of potentially self-fulfilling prophecy. They forget it is one thing to be a self-proclaimed prophet and quite another to extrapolate into the future with hard statistics. But their kind hates the objective approach of science. They were not smart enough in high school to understand science, and becoming scientist-mocking, scriptural literalists is their way to sublimate into a la-la-land above the plain-ol’ business need for coexistence, and look down on scientists with inferiority masquerading as superiority. How many Armageddon addicts are riding scientists’ backs with a paranoid whip? When it comes to driving science to come up with newer weaponry and arousing a grandiose awe by shocking yet another part of humanity, no problem. This irony is doubled in modern India, where adherents of Gandhi’s religion escalate global tensions toward the kind of rapture that can only come from the decisive glow of a nuclear winter, as witnessed by their recent launch of a long-range missile that can now plant an all-consuming mushroom cloud on sprawling Shanghai. So whether it is America or China or India today, or Iran tomorrow, a seesaw of power balances from competing, one-on-one hallucinations of the religious kind are propagating forced oscillations arcing across the planet. The initial perturbations were terrorists. Increasingly, these are reinforced with America supporting India against China with nuclear know-how, and China supporting Iran to bypass American sanctions and make nukes, leading to a vicious cycle that can suck us all in. The maw of the resulting vortex is being fed by television, where even the History Channel makes a mockery of fact with shows predicting doom like it is really going to happen.
However, college students have freely blossoming minds. To us, it is not some rapture ending the world in some white-hot flash that we must fear. It is the ossified minds of those suicidal and homicidal individuals, spread out like black holes over the world, who actually believe in this nonsense.
Arun Anand Ahuja
UNM student
