It's the End of the World as We Know It...

...and I feel - well, "fine" doesn't seem like quite the right word. "Blackly depressed," perhaps, or maybe just "bleak" would be slightly more apt.

Having been stewing in a vat of career confusion and financial worry for the past few months, I've found myself drawn to movies and books of a similar theme - apocalypse. Most of these works are rather shoddy and not particularly well-thought-out, but between the handful of them that are great and the nuggets of wisdom one can still collect from the aforementioned crap-fests, you can still come away with a pretty significant feeling of doom.

Top this all off with an article I read this morning concerning several leading scientists from around the world who agree that the human race (at least as we know it) has little to no chance of surviving the next century, and you've got the recipe for a really upbeat f*cking day.

I mean, anyone with a head on their shoulders (and a decent brain in said head) should realize that the continuation of our species is no longer a definite. The problem of vast overpopulation, and hence over-farming, alone is enough to make one question the possibility of mankind's future. Need I quote the countless studies about what year the world's tuna supply will run out, or how little farmland will be left in 50 years if the population continues to rise at the percentages which it has been? The fact of the matter is, we're running out of room, food, and natural resources, and instead of slowing our worldwide reproductive rate we're increasing it on a daily basis.

I'm not trying to say that people should stop having babies, so don't get all human rights activist on me. I'm just saying that we need to figure something out if we want the human race to survive...as geeky as it sounds, off-world colonization is pretty much the only option we've got going for us at this point, but sadly we seemed to have lost our hunger for the great space race back in the '80s.

Say we figure out a way around the overpopulation problem. Great. Now you simply have to worry about the threat of nuclear war, our dwindling supplies of natural resources like oil or clean water, and of course everyone's favorite, global warming.

To save us all from a lot of eye-rolling and name-calling, I'll avoid the topic of an intelligent computer uprising (a la "Terminator"), but our dependency on computers should frighten you in any case. Do you have any idea how quickly our country would fall into complete anarchy if somehow all of our computer systems came crashing down? Everything is stored in computers, on microchips - how much cash do YOU have sitting around your house? That's right, not much...it's all stored digitally in your bank or on your credit cards, and with the flick of a switch - congratulations, you're officially bankrupt.

I know this all makes me sound like a crazy nut-bag anti-children (hell, anti-everything) wanker, but I really don't think I am...I view most of this as pretty obvious stuff, and it shocks and scares me that more people aren't concerned about these issues.

There's definitely something to be said for living in the moment and being happy where you are, and I try to remember that each and every day of my life. But I sure do hope that there is a group of people (vastly more intelligent and driven than I) out there who are concentrating on the matter of our ultimate survival. Because selfishly, as sh*tty as the human race can often be, I kinda don't wanna see it end.

Sorry for the darkness...more pep next time, I swear. In the meantime, I suggest you go read "Oryx and Crake" or "The Road" for more feel-good end-of-time cuddliness.