First-hand Experience with Armageddon

An occasional reader wonders "Why Apocalypticon" when they stumble onto this blog...which I think I explain fairly lucidly in the link marked: "The End of Everything" at the top left-hand corner of the page, but it occurs to me that people form assumptions first, then MAYBE read what I had to say.

Yes, I was strongly influenced by an Amageddon-Aware Southern Baptist church in the 80s, and I was one of the few real thinkers who challenged some frankly nutty suppositions, but I was only a teen then, so nobody listened.

I didn't reject everything...I just put things into a more thoughtful context...like cluing people in to the fact that the pervasive fear of impending Apocalypse in the United States was mostly a response to the threat of all-out nuclear war with the former Soviet Union being cleverly merged with Southern Baptist theology via every form of media imaginable: TV, movies, newspapers, music...and not necessarily randomly so.

When this sort of influence becomes self-confirmed by the whole culture, it's extremely difficult to shake-off. And I saw it AS IT EVOLVED, at least in Southern Baptist circles.

Again, my personal religious beliefs are NOBODY'S BUSINESS, except for the rare individual who wants to take the time to understand exactly HOW I formed the conclusions that ultimately drove me to the unique mindset I have today.

And they are rare. In general I find that people want to do one of two things: 1) "correct" my thinking or 2) try to understand how a person of my intelligence can POSSIBLY accept the validity of certain religious beliefs.

This puts me at odds with BOTH religious- and pure-science-zealots, and frankly they're both laboring under unrealistic illusions, often.

As comedian Steve Martin relates on his late-70s Wild and Crazy Guy album, "It's so hard to believe in anything anymore....I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my Lucky Astrology Mood-watch."

Obviously it's a joke, and Steve's personal-beliefs remain mysterious to the public to this day...and more power to him for that.

The point is that I BELIEVE THAT FREEDOM-OF-THOUGHT allows people to EXAMINE ALL THINGS HONESTLY, which is a concept that I'm sure all intelligent people can agree on, no matter what they believe.

As I've frequently mentioned to several people...I'm a terminally unaffiliated American, in the truest sense.

I've found that ironic paradoxes frequently inspire unique thinking, which is the high-point of human-consciousness in my eyes...admittedly, a recipe for delusional thinking, but also one for clear-thinking.

And if I've learned anything, it's that I'd rather live in a world of confused people than one of unthinking robots.

At least you can argue with the confused. Robots only act as they are programmed. And what good is that? except for lawn-sprinklers. ;)