Earth is doomed! Doomed I tell you!

Watched "Forbidden Planet" (50th anniversary edition) tonight and then spooled through a host of trailers for films of that era (early fifties) and they were all about the end of the world by various tragedies, typically unleashed by (gasp!) NUUUUUUUUUCLEAR POWER!

Biblical prophecies fulfilled! Man's worst nightmares unleashed! The seeds of our own destruction ... what were we thinking?

Just goes to remind you that when we enter an era of new rule sets, like that ushered in--in many people's minds--by 9/11, we endure a long silly season of such prognostications.

To point out that fact is to be--of course--horrifically naive or, worse, tragically afflicted by man's hubris! And if you cite the fallacies of the fifties, then your opponents will retreat to other ages and you're quickly into hypotheticals of the most amazing, Fox-TV sort. But people have such a strong internal need for the "end times." You can't reason them out of it, and the secular versions are just as strong, always invoking man's arrogance instead of his usual venal sins.

I can't remember how many documentary films I sat through at Immaculate Conception that said way back when that we'd all succumb by now to disease, or bugs, or pollution, or the widely predicted ice age.

Then there was the ozone hole we could never fix, except we did.

The environment is the usual lead example today, with predictions of millions upon millions of deaths being possible, and so all sorts of dramatic changes are proposed at huge costs, when, of course, for pennies a year we could save the same numbers from all sorts of early childhood diseases or make all sorts of advances in combating this or that affliction right here and now.

But we never seem attracted by those pennies-on-the-dollar arguments for real lives today. Instead, we're always pining for those mythically vast numbers deep into the future, using frightening images of the worst vertical shocks to justify the most extreme horizontal scenarios of change. The same rotten kids who don't deserve the world we've given them today are equally undeserving of the horrible world we're leaving them in the future.

Some things never change.

But it is always a competition for attention, is it not? In a perfect world, all risk is balanced equally and with similar vigor. It's just that we all seem to value different things. Today's sacrifices are typically viewed cynically, while tomorrow's carry the greatest nobility imaginable (much like yesteryear's, back when all wars were "honorable"--an epithet far more easily bestowed by history than by current news coverage, as I remember a Cold War that was complete bullshit right up to the point where it ended well, and then it was suddenly a noble cause that rang true for the entire run, did it not?). So we were always up to past challenges, but never up to today's challenges, hence the natural inclination to retreat into hypothesized futures both terrible and terrific. That our past victories fixed all those past problems is soon forgotten, and assumptions about our sudden stupidity abound ("Complexity! Complexity I tell you!").

My favorite line from one trailer ("The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms!") has the scientist warning the military officer not to miss with the next shot, as he notes, "This is the last isotope of its kind this side of Oak Ridge!"

I'll be sure to let my colleagues in Tennessee know they better gear up some new ones for the next round of monsters to be slain.

None of this is to make light of the real challenges we face, which--as always--are great and varied.

It's just to remind people that there's a reason why humans dominate this planet, one I consider both divine and devilishly mundane.

So don't surrender the future just yet (always tempting as these end of the year recollections remind you of all the tragedies that beset us over the past twelve month; why? because they're news man!).

We've never had a smaller percentage of humanity involved in organized violence than we do today.

We've never had a more robust or deeply integrated global economy than we do today, nor one growing so steadily and broadly.

We've never had more new scientific knowledge accumulating or smart people being put against tough tasks.

And we've never been more spiritual (outside of Europe, of course).

Humanity will top out at 50% more people than we have today within the next four decades. How we treat these four decades will determine much about the future of our species, but I see that challenge as our best one yet.

Not to be feared but to be relished. Not used to inspire fear but to build confidence. Not avoided but created.